Customer Reviews

Paradox Alley

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After finally finding and reading (twice over) this last book of John DeChancie's Starrigger trillogy, all I can say is I was sorry that the story had to end...this author has put together a set of books with a story so interwoven and captivating that you will find you won't want to put down untill you are finished. My gratitude to John DeChancie for a great adventure!

This book completes a mind-stretching trilogy that never fails to entertain. From the first book of the series, "Starrigger" through "Red Limit Freeway" to "Paradox Alley", the reader is treated to concepts so amazing and soul stirring that it harkens back to the Glory Days of hard science fiction. More importantly, Mr. DeChancie's sense of humor and irony shines through in all three books. His characters are believable and as "real" as any ever created by Heinlein himself. You care about what happens to them. These are amazing pieces of fiction and if anyone in Hollywood hasn't opted them for the big screen, they should.

This is the second book in one of the best series ever, with a great "hard science" foundation, and a great story. I couldn't put them down until I had read the entire series through, and sorely regret that I cannot find a copy of this book anywhere.

"Paradox Alley" is the final book in a trilogy, falling after "Starrigger" and "Red Limit Freeway." Unlike the other two in the series, it cannot be read as a standalone novel without a great deal of confusion. That said, the premise is this: the stars, galaxies, and possibly even the universes, are all linked by nearly indestructible highways with exits that jump the traveler to the next world over. Any vehicle can drive on these roads (though, it might be recommended that the vehicle be air tight and radiation reflective), so fortunes have been built and lost on the market of transporting goods and people across the universe. However, two questions plague all users of the interstellar roads. 1. Who built the roads? 2. Why didn't they leave a darned MAP?
Quite against his will, our truck-driving protagonist has been chased across the road system because someone started the rumor that he had the map. He picked up all sorts of people along the way. He also picked up a paradox, of the temporal kind. By the beginning of "Paradox Alley," he and his passengers have finished their outbound journey and discovered who built the roads. It turns out the builder(s) did leave a map, and the protagonist did have it, but it wasn't the map he thought he had. The protagonist has to now figure out how to get himself and his passengers back home before the whole mess started.

This book is faster-paced than the others in the series, starting off by dumping the reader straight into the middle of the action. The story also takes the reader through convolutions that either require slow reading or re-reading for comprehension, but that ultimately neatly solve all of the loose ends in the story but two. DeChancie's voice, vocabulary, and easy invocations of technical and scientific concepts with which his audience are probably familiar remain consistent, making "Paradox Alley" a meaty read without turning it into a hefty tome. The meat does not prevent this book from being a pleasant beach book, either. Like the other two in the series, "Paradox Alley" is enjoyable within a day or less on the amusing characters alone.


Five Stars: "Paradox Alley" ends the series with the satisfying crunch of a virtual pair dividing, and eases the reader into the mellow aftertaste of noticing all the clues in the trilogy as to what the protagonist does after the books, and realizing how he does it.