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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Funny premise ruined by gratuitous obscenity & poor editing,
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This review is from: Queen of Denial (Paperback)
There's a mildly funny short story here. It's buried, however, under piles of unnecessary 4-letter words, and grammatical errors and word misuse that weren't picked up by the editors. Meisha Merlin usually does a better job than this - if I were the copyeditor and proofreader mentioned on the copyright page, I would ask to have my name removed. The Liaden universe novels come out pretty much free of errors; why shouldn't we expect the same for a smaller book? For example, on the first-page blurb alone, we have this: "Enter Drewcila Qwah a ruff and tumble salvager, who drinks to much, smokes to much, and has a mouth you wouldn't kiss your mother with. Drew and her partner, a huge hair covered alien named Van Gar, have been hired by the kings emissaries to take the confused queen to meet her husband." OK, if the use of "to" instead of "too" didn't bother you, the lack of commas in some places, lack of apostrophes and hyphens in others, didn't bother you, then perhaps you won't be as annoyed as I am. I don't think there's a single page that has fewer than two [expletive] on it, and after a while, I got distracted by counting the number of [expletive] and [expletive] on each page, to the detriment of whatever the characters were otherwise saying. I think the obscenities are meant to convey the notion of blue-collar, working class culture, but it's an insult to blue-collar workers everywhere. There are authors who know how to use vocabulary to good effect. Tanya's Huff's "Valor" series (two books so far) has the enlisted personnel using their share of four-letter words, and every bit of it sounds realistic and necessary. Rosen's doesn't. There's a happy ending, of sorts, if a bit lame. As I said, there's a pretty funny short story in here. The "huge, hair-covered alien" (forgive me, I couldn't resist the impulse to add the proper punctuation) is a lovable Wookie type, who is secretly in love with our, um, heroine. The Royal Family and its courtiers contain some stereotypes, but they're amusing. There are a couple of cute references to classic stories (I think I caught one to Sturgeon's "Killdozer") So, if you're not bothered by the flaws, you'll probably enjoy this.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Queen of Garbage and a good laugh too:),
By K. Maxwell "katmax1" (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Queen of Denial (Paperback)
Drewcilia Qwah is the best salvager in the galaxy with a vocabulary that would make a hardened dock worker blush, and driking habits a fish would envy.When she is approached to return a a lost queen to her home planet (for a lot of money), she takes the job. But she doesn't know what she's getting into as things aren't what they seem. This novel is not big, but it's well written, funny and not padded out to excessive length. If you've ever seen the old tv show "quark" it brings back some memories of that in a strange way. If you like humour in your SF then this is a book worth picking up as it has some laugh out loud moments and it's an original and well told story.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rednecks In Outer Space!,
By fredtownward "The Analytical Mind; Have Brain... (Mocksville, North Carolina, United States) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)
This review is from: Queen of Denial (Paperback)
This book was a lot of fun and a definite change of pace from "typical" SF (if there is any such thing), starting with Don Maitz' truly magnificent cover, which grabbed me by the lapels, dragged me over to the bookcase it was displayed on, and forced me to pick it up. Selina Rosen took over from there and carried me off to a magical universe with beer cans and ice chests and rednecks in space. Drewcilia's and her partner, Van Gar's attempts to cope with the twists and turns of this intrigue make for a lot of fun, and I only have two nits to pick, which cost it a star. First, the book gets a little politically preachy in spots, which causes it to drag as we switch from wickedly funny to earnest and sincere, and second, although plot twists conceal it until the end, this is clearly the first volume of a planned series so that the main characters end up not changing a bit, which was something of a disappointment. But if you want to boldly go where no SF author I've ever read has gone before, say hello to the Queen Of Denial.
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