Wrapt in Crystal (School & Library Binding)

I could not stand Wrapt in Crystal.

The world was minorly interesting, but the religious beliefs did not have the fullness and richness that marks the beliefs of any religion I've encountered before. (...Dogmatic people tend to be dogmatic about more than one thing...)

Also...the characters.
Her male hero is completely unbelievable. He's supposed to be macho, but the guy waxes poetic about pretty scenery, children, etc., etc. Split personality.

As with some of the other readers, the mystery was not something to carry me. Nobody that I cared about was murdered. Until the end, no part of the mystery provided tension. In fact, the "lead" that the hero follows seemed rather weak throughout.

And if I read one more word about flowing, golden, riotous, silken hair...

Is this worth my meager tuppence? Is it worth spending on a book rather than upon dinner for a few days?

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It's your basic detective story -- we immediately imagined Nicholas Cage as the worlds-weary Drake -- set on a slightly stereotyped Earth colony where Catholicism has mutated into a form of Marian devotion with a bit of Isis thrown in. Sin and chastisement are downplayed in favour of emphasis on works of faith and charity (which in one of the two major religious orders, may include sexual favours).

Someone is murdering sisters from both orders, and Drake is sent to track down the killer. Part of his investigation leads him into a situation right out of a famous 1940s noir movie -- can't say more without giving it away, but so much is predictable you'll probably see it immediately even if you don't know the film.

Much of the plot, settings and characters will be familiar to anyone who's spent a few afternoons with his dad's old Analog SF and Ellery Queen magazines. It got a bit tiresome after a while -- how many times do we have to hear about the Moonchildren's deadly skills and penchant for danger and excitement? I get it already, they're lethal! The spaceport bar scene was so predictable we could almost quote the dialogue before we read it. And yes, the stereotyped male and female roles were all there, and being tiresome as ever.

The linguistic variations didn't strike us as errors, but as things that are bound to happen as a language travels to a distant place, gets mixed in with other languages, and evolves. However, the story was predictable enough that we began counting the narrative glitches. In the otherwise interesting wedding scene, we were enlightened to read the bride wore shoes on her feet. Not on her head?

This impressed us as a good first outing by a newcomer, not by a seasoned writer with four or five previous works. It could have serialized in Analog thirty years ago. For sf/fantasy novels that concern religion, we recommend Walter M. Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" and Mary Doria Russell's "The Sparrow".

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