From Publishers Weekly
Hang on! Hugo-winner Zahn (
Cascade Point) takes off on a rip-roaring interstellar train ride with hard-boiled hero Frank Compton, recently fired from Earth's Western Alliance Intelligence for whistle-blowing on the costly Yandro colony boondoggle, a U.N. scheme to make humanity a real interstellar power. From Earth's mean streets, Compton hops the Quadrail, a mysterious galactic system run by the alien Spiders, who give him four months to defuse an interstellar war being engineered by the gestalt entity the Modhri. With Bayta, "The Girl" sent by the Spiders to recruit him, Compton blasts his way through layers of subterfuge and teams of unpronounceable alien baddies. Seeing a new chunk of the truth fall into place about every hundred pages, Compton carries comic-strip action to dizzying extremes in this highballing romp. Situations predictable from tough-guy PI fiction and characters straight out of Dick Tracy (even though some wear chipmunk fur and others inhabit telepathic coral colonies) make this night train a juicily familiar joyride.
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From Booklist
Zahn's latest is a highly readable thriller in space-opera trappings, set a few hundred years from now. The myriad worlds hosting intelligent life are tied together by the Quadrail, an interstellar transport system run by the enigmatic Spiders. Transport of weapons or military equipment isn't allowed, but someone, somewhere, appears to have found a way around the prohibition. The Spiders hire cashiered government investigator Frank Compton (he uncovered a few too many skeletons) to discover how and what threat it constitutes. By the third chapter, beings of a number of species are gunning for Compton from all directions. Zahn's ingenuity, a steady resource during a writing career now a generation long, makes it easy for him to come up with reader-rewarding demonstrations of his characters' similar quality. A great read.
Roland GreenCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
