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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hero reminds me of a knight errant, April 4, 2010
I think many of the previous reviewers have neglected the ethical dimensions in this story. Yes, the book looks a lot like military SF but the author transcends the sub-genre. How the hero usually avoids "unnecessary" killing (even "bad guys"), while (in his inner dialogue) demonstrating moral outrage at the depravity of his enemies, all add up to the central theme of this novel. The superhero with his super fighting machine has a soul. His ethical qualms are not hindrances but part of his self-identity. Despite that he's still willing to follow the old Texas adage of "Some people just plain need killing" when confronted with an evil SOB.
I'm reminded of the two most morally serious and least appreciated television series in recent memory: Josh Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. If it had not been killed by the soul-less "suits" who run the studios, Whedon's Firefly series would have given us the same challenging exploration of a science fictional (vs. vampire-fantasy) universe as that done by the more commercially successful Buffy.
Mark Van Name has hit his stride as a storyteller and as a writer in his third novel. The characters are engaging and the plotting is sufficiently convoluted. Most importantly the morally serious sensibility of the hero now provides a nucleus for the story that elevates it above its origins as genre fiction. In the first book, One Jump Ahead, Jon Moore obtained title to a jump-gate capable flying battle machine by the name of Lobo, when he took it as payment for a mercenary trouble-shooting job. His customer didn't realize that Lobo was not an imitation Predator Class Assault Vehicle but the real thing with an artificial intelligence with unplumbed capacities and a boundless supply of sarcasm.
The two of them function as a team for "courier missions." Contemplating the antecedents for the convoluted plots, I would hearken back to the old "Paladin" TV western from the 1960's and the Travis McGee detective novels of John P. McDonald. The heroes from two disparate genres are both archetypes of the modern knight errant figure who nominally is in it for the money, but whose quests only incidentally ever end up making any money.
Heaven in this book is a planet with a Disney World sort of amusement park that is filled with genetically engineered creatures. Dragons do fly through the air around the arriving guests. Jon is hired to penetrate the operation because under the cover of its "normal" operation the planetary government is sponsoring a scientist who is conducting human experiments that kill children in failed attempts to create super-humans.
An interplanetary government hires Jon to infiltrate the operation, rescue the mole inside it who's lost contact with her spymasters and then exfiltrate with the captured mad scientist and secret agent onboard Lobo. The woman who is assigned to him as the local talent/liaison has another mission for him: rescue her young son who was kidnapped to be a test subject. The rest of the plot I'll leave to the reader. I don't believe in "spoiler reviews."
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
faster than the speed of light, June 4, 2009
Of all people, nanotechnology enhanced soldier Jon Moore should have known first hand by now that good intentions lead to hell especially if a beautiful damsel in distress is involved (see ONE JUMP AHEAD and Slanted Jack). Still, he started off with just trying to get the femme fatale away from her abusive spouse over the objection of his only friend in the universe, Lobo, his artificially intelligent Predator-Class Assault Vehicle.
One thing leads to another manipulation of Jon while Lobo shakes his engine in disgust as his good deed definitely gets him punished. The Central Coalition, whom Jon knows to avoid having a bad history of "cooperation" with them, has him searching for renegade scientist Jorge Wei, who allegedly is conducting banned nano research on children. Jon and Lobo head to Heaven where Wei is allegedly performing his illegal tests cocooned inside a very popular humongous tourist spot, Wonder Island, a place impossible to enter without permission;. Super soldier Jon and super assault vehicle Lobo no such boundaries, but what awaits them is the results of bioengineering.
The third Jon-Lobo outer space odyssey is identical in tone to the previous novels as the story line is faster than the speed of light, the action never stops, and some of the key characters are two dimensional from the same cookie cutter. Anyone who appreciates space opera at an incredible acceleration will enjoy the latest escapades of the universe's greatest soldier and his sidekick.
Harriet Klausner
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not Flinx again!, September 19, 2010
After three books the main character still lives in angst, fear and confusion all of the time. He has a super power (programmable nanites) but he is too afraid and stupid to make use of it - not even once in this whole book! He is supposedly almost 100 years old but can't figure out how to relate to women as well as a teenage boy would. He can't decide whether to risk his life about what he cares for or to hide in fear somewhere. This book reads like a Hollywood script for a Star Wars movie or something even more shallow.
The final straw is at the end when his best buddy and fighting partner who he trusts his life to daily admits his own nanite enhanced background but Jon is not able to come clean about the exact same thing in his background. This series makes the awful series about Flinx (who has to take a vacation from his angst every other book but never figures out that it travels with him) look almost intelligent.
I won't be following this series any more!
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