Customer Reviews

Xenopath (Bengal Station Novels)

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Xenopath is the second Bengal Station book by Eric Brown, focusing on a telepathic detective based in a huge spaceport off the coast of India. The first novel, Necropath, was a joy to read last year and it certainly whetted my appetite for more stories focusing on Jeff Vaughan and his abilities. With Xenopath I was hoping that the general feeling would be carried through and that the characters would continue to be as enjoyable as they were in Necropath. I was pleasantly surprised in the direction it went and managed to blast through it with no problem at all!

Set two years after Necropath, Jeff Vaughan has now married Sakura and they are expecting their first child. After having his pin removed he now works outside of the investigative area and enjoys a quiet, although not wealthy, life. This was the first thing that struck me when reading Xenopath. Gone is the depressed and moody Jeff Vaughan and here we are with a happy and content one, enjoying his life with Sakura even though they live in a relatively small apartment and don't have too much to show for themselves. What does come across very well is the love that Jeff and Sakura show for each other. It's a very real and very well written relationship - if you've ever been in love then you can relate to the deep feeling between the two and just how well Eric Brown puts that across.

So, it's clear from the off that we've got a different type of novel here with different motivations and well structured character relationships. When we move on to the investigative and telepathic side of things, once Jeff has had a new well paid job and state-of-the-art implant, the novel kicks into gear and moves along at a good and steady pace. The set-up is established and the case starts to get deeper and deeper until the pieces start to point to one place - but why? This is what kept me turning the pages and trying to figure out just what exactly was going on. It's fairly obvious from early on what the outcome could be, but the questions of how? why? when? what? - you know, that feeling you get when you're really enjoying a story and just want to get to the part where it all gets explained - pushes you on and on.

I was more than happy with the conclusion and Eric Brown managed to write a damned good story and got it across in a very effective way. I can't say that this is better than Necropath, but it certainly is different. The tone is lighter and more optimistic and the ideas and concepts dealt with are bigger, but it's just as good a read. I would recommend this without hesitation and strongly suggest that you start the journey from the beginning to fully appreciate it. Here's looking to book 3, Cosmopath!

Fun book, like its predecessor, but the author does something (2 things, actually) here I found very annoying. If you ignore my complaint below, then I think this was a very well-crafted sci-fi set thriller which I enjoyed.

SPOILER WARNING

SPOILERS FOLLOW

DON'T READ UNLESS YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

What kind of idiot, being put off a case with high pay where it appears the equivalent of a fortune 100 company is murdering people and doing it so well that they are impossible to catch, decides to pursue the matter for free? Out of that idiot set, how many would do it being fairly recently married with a baby on the way? At any rate, Vaughn finds it preferable to - for purely personal reasons - go after a company that is clearly a law unto itself and has shown no hesitation to kill when useful. Ignoring the constant and clumsy foreshadowing, it was obvious to anyone that they would come after him or his wife eventually.

Of course, then we reach the next deus ex machina - the alien's ability to raise the dead (and the fetus of the dead, too), fixing organic brain damage, etc. I thought this was a very cheap way to get out of the payoff of Vaughn's blind insistence on pursuing this resulting in the death of his wife. Alternately, you could conclude that the alien, being able to do this, should also be able to impact the cell functions that cause aging, thus offering the host increased longevity. The entire alien brain-guest parasite does remind me of Brian Stableford's Halcyon Drift sextology.