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robphippen's review
5.0
I feel almost lucky not to have discovered WJW until now. I had always been put off by the rather pulpy covers on his books in the past. While this book does have its fair share of sci-fi derringer do, the writing good, and we are often offered and insights into what each of the main characters is thinking. All of which provides a nice balance of pure escort entertainment, and food for thought.
thestarman's review
3.0
IN SHORT: Sex, Drugs, Rock n Roll. Oh, and spaceships and , too.
An imaginative, cyberpunkish,and sometimes mildly psychedelic or cartoonish sci-fi story. Setting alternates between planetside and space/spaceships.
Stars two capable young people who don't like clothing, get freaky a lot, snort uppers & downers (completely legal and sometimes necessary), and have run after run of increasingly bad luck -- some of it self-inflicted.
Then they accidentally encounter something extraordinary, possibly quite dangerous, and certainly life-changing. Now if only they can figure out how to profit from it, and clear their names...
VERDICT: 3.33 low-grav boinks. Different, mostly entertaining, memorable. Not high on realism, loveable characters, or characters with common sense or good interpersonal communication skills. But overall, good escapist fare with some mild humor (but no laugh-out-louds for me).
TRUTH IN COVER ART? LOW TO NOPE, except that Beautiful Maria does have long dark hair. Some of the alternate covers are worse, though.
SIMILAR-ish TO THIS YA BOOK:
ENTANGLED by Amy Rose Capetta: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17165987-entangled
Spoiler
aliensAn imaginative, cyberpunkish,and sometimes mildly psychedelic or cartoonish sci-fi story. Setting alternates between planetside and space/spaceships.
Stars two capable young people who don't like clothing, get freaky a lot, snort uppers & downers (completely legal and sometimes necessary), and have run after run of increasingly bad luck -- some of it self-inflicted.
Then they accidentally encounter something extraordinary, possibly quite dangerous, and certainly life-changing. Now if only they can figure out how to profit from it, and clear their names...
VERDICT: 3.33 low-grav boinks. Different, mostly entertaining, memorable. Not high on realism, loveable characters, or characters with common sense or good interpersonal communication skills. But overall, good escapist fare with some mild humor (but no laugh-out-louds for me).
TRUTH IN COVER ART? LOW TO NOPE, except that Beautiful Maria does have long dark hair. Some of the alternate covers are worse, though.
SIMILAR-ish TO THIS YA BOOK:
ENTANGLED by Amy Rose Capetta: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17165987-entangled
tome15's review
5.0
Williams, Walter Jon. Angel Station. Tor, 1989.
Angel Station is, perhaps, the most original of all Walter Jon Williams’ novels, and rereading it after many years impressed me anew. Evidently, Williams himself had a similar experience. When he first published it, he thought it was a mess, but he says that reformatting it for ebook publication, he was surprised at how well it worked. It is a far-future first-contact story with all the pop and sizzle the best cyberpunk. Its main characters, Ubu Roy and Beautiful Maria are sibling “shooters,” who have the gene- and drug-enhanced reflexes to navigate their FTL ships through artificially generated singularities. But, they are young, down on their luck, and haunted by the holographic ghost of Pasco, their dead father. He created them through gene-splicing. Ubu Roy, the ambitious “bossrider” of their ship, has four arms and catlike reflexes. Beautiful Maria, his sister and sexual partner, is a “subatomic witch” who, with the proper drugs, can perceive and manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum at a quantum level. Their lives become more complicated when they meet a hive-mind alien with problems of its own. The alien is itself a well-developed character, and there is some surprising thematic complexity incorporated in the novel’s structure. If you missed this one, I would put it on your list.
Angel Station is, perhaps, the most original of all Walter Jon Williams’ novels, and rereading it after many years impressed me anew. Evidently, Williams himself had a similar experience. When he first published it, he thought it was a mess, but he says that reformatting it for ebook publication, he was surprised at how well it worked. It is a far-future first-contact story with all the pop and sizzle the best cyberpunk. Its main characters, Ubu Roy and Beautiful Maria are sibling “shooters,” who have the gene- and drug-enhanced reflexes to navigate their FTL ships through artificially generated singularities. But, they are young, down on their luck, and haunted by the holographic ghost of Pasco, their dead father. He created them through gene-splicing. Ubu Roy, the ambitious “bossrider” of their ship, has four arms and catlike reflexes. Beautiful Maria, his sister and sexual partner, is a “subatomic witch” who, with the proper drugs, can perceive and manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum at a quantum level. Their lives become more complicated when they meet a hive-mind alien with problems of its own. The alien is itself a well-developed character, and there is some surprising thematic complexity incorporated in the novel’s structure. If you missed this one, I would put it on your list.
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