The Wardove [Paperback]

Story concerns a cynical, hard-boiled noir detective circa A.D. 3000. Set on a Libertarian lunar society, where most people view statists as weird and evil.

Luna is at war with "Powerists" and, being a libertarian society, must raise funds for the war voluntarily. The "wardove" is a pop singer who's touring with her band to raise money for the war effort. Evil statists are murdering the members of her band, and the detective must find the killer.

The libertarian solutions and society are intriguing.

On the down side, the aliens are silly, as loopy and unrealistic as those in most British sci-fi TV series (e.g. Dr. Who or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Ogats resemble floating umbrellas, and Ewons are like giant blue starfish. Amazingly, both survive in human environments, working side by side with humans. And these aliens -- they're libertarians too!

Even worse, this Pulpless... edition is FULL of typos. Broken paragraphs, reversed quotation marks, quotation marks and commas where there should be none, misspellings, missing periods and commas.

The wardove's "lyrics," strewn throughout the book, are dull and slow things down.

They story is enjoyable, yet uneven, veering from drearily hackneyed to strikingly original.

The identity and death of the villain is laughably unoriginal and ineptly handled. Yet the "wardove," her personality and effect on people, why she is as she is, and her final scene with the detective, are insightful and true to life, avoiding the cliches inherent in noir sci-fi.

If you like noir sci-fi & libertarian politics, you should enjoy THE WARDOVE despite the numerous typos.

Neil, as a musician himself, does a wonderful job of portraying the bizarre alchemy of glitter and sleaze that is the music industry. If anything, his work is almost too realistic. You can smell the stale cigarette smoke and sense the sweaty ambience of dressing-room miasma as you read.

If you want to get 'Henry Martyn' or 'Bretta Martyn' but haven't yet, do yourself a favor and get 'The WarDove' first; it contains background essential to Neil's later, bigger books. Be warned: the style of the 'Martyn' tales differs greatly, and may not be to everyone's taste. Still, Neil ties it together masterfully at the end of 'Bretta Martyn.' You'll want to read all three--unless you're a Clinton/Gore supporter who substitutes emotional reaction for clear thinking.

The writing is tight and the characters are believable. But it's by far the most conventional and predictable plot I've ever read from Smith. There are none of the startling new SF concepts, no new philosophical insights to mull over, not even much libertarian rabble-rousing.

He presents us with a 900-year-old post-apocalypse lunar libertarian paradise, but fails to describe it at all; it's not even a backdrop to the action. His aliens talk and act just like humans. In the prologue he gives away everything about the ending but the identity of the villain, and most of the characters are so unlikeable that it could have been any of them and we wouldn't really care. And he dots the beginning, end, and sometimes even the middle of every chapter with faux rock lyrics that add nothing but obstacles for your eyes to trip over.

Whoever did the blueline editing for this edition at pulpless.com should never work in the business again.

Some El Neil books are among my all-time favorites and some are not, but this is the first one I can only describe as disappointing. He never finished the trilogy (unless the Martyn books count) and that's a shame, because the Coordinated Arm concept was intriguing. But if this is as far as he could take it, maybe it's for the best.