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| Cover art by Julie Bell |
| LODESTAR Michael Flynn New York: TOR, March 2000 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN 0-312-86137-0 | 365pp. | HC | $24.95 | |
I found this third novel in the Firestar another worthy successor to the original volume of the series. It continues the trend of Rogue Star in that the revelations it offers turn more on character development than on plot development. Therefore it is less of a page turner than Volume 1, and in a few places I felt it had a soap-opera tone to it.
The most significant revelation concerns the character of Adam van Huyten, son of Chris — and it has a profound effect upon the plot. The story moves forward in multiple threads as the older generation gives way to younger players, including a cadet pilot who passes through some challenging situations on her way to space. But Mariesa van Huyten remains an influential player, and by the end of this novel is immersed in organizing the world to meet the threat that has driven her throughout her life, newly confirmed by observations of Asteroid 2004AS as it emerges from behind the Sun. This task is complicated by some of the personalities with whom she must deal.
"That was the problem, Mariesa thought, when men of facts confronted men of words. To Blessing, it only mattered whether a proposition was correct or not. To men like Dark, what mattered was who won. It was a dominance game; a means of establishing who was the alpha male. (Or female. There were women who played that game too.) Such men made use of rhetoric—the word play of definition, the raised voice, the semantic quibble—to privilege a favored position and put others in their place. To them, a fact was just another rhetorical device. Solomon Dark represented the president of the United States, and he was not about to let anyone forget it, least of all his vice-chairman. Mariesa wondered why Daryll, otherwise so intelligent, did not see that. "Dr. Blessing is right, Solomon," Mariesa said. "We cannot afford to overlook the possibility." "It was the word 'overlook' that caught Dark's attention and caused him first to pause, then to nod. All Dark needed was the proper stroking and the right words. 'Possibility'. 'We'. Words that danced tentatively around the issues, never pressing too hard; words inviting mutual understandings until consensus condensed out of the fog. That was, after all, how diplomacy and negotiations were conducted. That the question of Impact (sic) might not be diplomatic at all was as invisible to Dark's razor-sharp mind as the political issues were to Daryll Blessing. – Page 221 |
In the course of this activity she has a dream which telegraphs the action of the next volume, as does the cover of this one. But there is no lack of action; many plot developments take place, and Chapter 18 is as gripping as any real gangland shoot-em-up could be.
There is the usual spate of grammatical errors. The worst, in my view, is the inexplicably inconsistent capitalization of LEO: sometimes it's "LEO", sometimes "Leo". Also, Flynn continues the minor annoyance of demonstrating his command of foreign words: here, "laager," schildwache," and "brodyazhka". With Internet assistance, the first two were fairly easy to figure out; but I got nowhere with the last one.
Errata for Lodestar
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