Necropath: Book One of the Bengal Station Trilogy (Mass Market Paperback)

~ Eric Brown (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mystery, fantasy and science fiction create a backdrop for this far-flung story with an uneasy conclusion. Jeff Vaughan, telepath in hiding, uncovers a bizarre shipment being smuggled from colony planet Verkerk's World: a young human girl, apparently an important cult figure, accompanying a mysterious shielded container. The colony is also the source of rhapsody, a potent drug, and when a friend overdoses under odd circumstances, Vaughan suspects a connection. He and cop Jimmy Chandra set off for Verkerk's World and soon uncover a plot around a rhapsody-fueled religion. As the body count rises, Vaughan starts to wonder whether he's battling a lethal alien force or blocking humanity from achieving transcendence. Brown (Kéthani) sketches a complex future world full of bitter idealists, strange aliens and fantastic landscapes where nothing is as it seems. (Oct.)
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Product Description

 

Science fiction meets crime noir, as Jeff Vaughan, jaded telepath, employed by the spaceport authorities on Bengal Station, discovers a sinister cult that worships a mysterious alien god. We follow Vaughan as he attempts to solve the murders and save himself from the psichopath out to kill him. This is Eric Brown's triumphant return to hard SF.

 

 

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Solaris; First Printing edition (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844166023
• ISBN-13: 978-1844166022
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #566,211 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK, but no masterpiece, October 4, 2008

By	Eylon Israely "Eylon @ Eco-Libris" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

After the wonderfully original surprise that was Kéthani, reading this book was a disappointment.

Let's begin with the setting and a little rant by yours truly. The novel is set in Bengal Station, which the back cover describes as "an exotic spaceport that dominates the ocean between India and Burma". Now, is it just me, or is this trend of ethnic sci-fi starting to seem a little bit over the top? Don't get me wrong, having a non-western culture at the center of a futuristic novel can be the basis of a great book, as Ian McDonald's Evolution's Shore (UK: Chaga) clearly demonstrated. But even McDonalnd's latest Brasyl relies way too much on the amalgamation of cultural clichés (favela, futebul, ayahuasca...) without delivering any really original imaginative ideas.

Thankfully, Brown refrains from throwing in too much Hindi and Thai jargon, and somehow even manages to avoid Burmese culture wholesale. The fact that the only cultural references are stereotypes is quite telling and you don't really get any new insight into an unknown culture. All of the Thai scenes happen in a Bangkok brothel and all South Indian cultural scenes involve either the burning ghat or mutilated kid baggers. Again, not much insight there. Compared to Kéthani, where he managed to skillfully portray regular people's lives as they are affected by momentous world events, it is almost as if he did not even try to turn on his sensitivity.

And don't get me started about the plot. The book starts in a real promising way, with the characters developed very well, but somewhere around page 150 it becomes rushed and full of regular detective sci-fi shticks.

I am going to read his previous Helix, and I may even give the next one in the Bengal series a shot. But I really hope that he gets his act together and delivers on the level of Kéthani and more.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing SF telepath police procedural, October 18, 2008

By	Jvstin "Paul Weimer" (Circle Pines, MN United States) - See all my reviews

The setting for Necropath (mostly) is Bengal Station, a starport in the Indian Ocean between Burma and India. The time frame is sometime in the future. Faster than Light travel is a fact of life, as are aliens, and human colonies on other worlds. Bengal Station is a contact point for voidships, the ships that travel between these other planets. It's a large, labyrinthine construct that reminds one a little bit of a planetbound Babylon 5. The rich, the poor, the desperate, the greedy all come to live and work here.

Jeff Vaughn is a telepath. Augmentations have given him the ability, and the curse, to hear other people's thoughts. One can make a living scanning for a living, and Vaughn makes a living doing so. He is not so comfortable, though, that he isn't intimately familiar with the darker sides of Bengal Station. And when a crippled beggar girl turns up dead, Vaughn's life will not be the same, and his journey to unravel the mystery of her death puts him face to face with a sinister, stars-spanning cult...

It's a great premise and setting, anyway. Telepaths, aliens, interstellar travel, Thai and Indian culture front and forward, a plot that plausibly could last several novels. The ingredients are all here for something really to enjoy. And yet, for me, it just didn't work. I wanted to like this novel, and I couldn't.

First, I didn't like the main character that much. He's not a d*ck but I found it difficult to sympathize with him, even given his haunted,dark past. Worse, the characterizations of other characters, major and minor, didn't work for me either. I couldn't fathom the relationship between Osborne and Sukara. It felt false to me and seemed to be only a way to get the both of them to Bengal Station.

And the novel completely broke for me when, giving evidence of the problem to the police, Vaughn is at first completely blown off by Commander Sinton as being unreliable and untrustworthy (and naturally not believed)...and then nearly in the same breath, the same officer tries to offer Vaughn a job! It made absolutely no sense and I nearly threw the book against the wall. I can understand for plot reasons (cliches) why the officer would not believe Vaughn, but the sudden whiplash of trying to hook Vaughn into a job in the same debriefing made absolutely no sense.

I think that its more me than the novel and while others might enjoy the book more, I did not. I have no plans on continuing to read the author or of Vaughn's adventures.