Catch the Lightning
Word of the day: ethereal
I don’t know why I do this to myself, but I read Catch the Lightning by Catherine Asaro. I figured that for two bucks at Buck-A-Book I couldn’t go wrong. Much.
Well, there was a lot of gratuitous sex, as usual, but this time with a minor. Even fanfic writers quail at statutory rape, and if John Ashcroft had his way Catch the Lightning would go on the fire with Romeo and Juliet. David Brin wouldn’t be happy with all this Rhon prince and princess stuff, and the worst part for me was the data dumps. Yes, Asaro is a scientist, but raw science does not scifi make - not these days, anyway. I couldn’t tell Althor apart from the Kelric of the last Asaro novel I read; it’s possible they’re the same character, or at least father and son, so that’s not the damning point it might have been.
On the positive side, the book moved along briskly and took a violent change of milieu halfway through in stride. I’m beginning to think of Asaro as a mix of hard scifi and bodice-ripping pulps, and not an unsuccessful one. That doesn’t mean I’ll blow another two bucks on her, though - there are other fish in the sea.
Right now I’m in the middle of Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams, which appears, whenever I stop to think about it, to be written in third person present. WJW is a wizard at world-building. More to follow…