I discovered first after I’d started reading this that this book is the fourth in a series (that started with The Snow Queen). But it’s a prequel of sorts, apparently, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem, I thought…
… but it is. It reads like one of those “let me fill in the backstory of some of these characters” exercise, and those are almost never successful. And since I know nothing of these characters, there’s no interest on my part in learning that backstory.
But if the story’s good on it’s own, it doesn’t matter much. But it’s not really a good story, either — it’s a typical Search For The MacGuffin story, and reads like something of a parody of those stories. It’s even got a witness with memory loss! (Who regains their memory at the right point in the story.)
And the final showdown… man. It’s like something out of Police Squad, with wave after wave of people emerging from the dark, saying “Stick ’em up” to the previous wave…
The book also seems to feature one of my least favourite sf tropes — there’s people from many different planets here, and at least one planet is a country with the serial numbers filed off, so all the high-ranking cops come from Planet India here, with a caste system and all. I mean, it’s not Planet Japan, which is the normal trope, but…
I bought a used copy of this, and I found a bookmark at the start of chapter six, so I guess that’s where they stopped reading. Which I should have taken as a sign.
It’s the least liked book in the Snow Queen series on Goodreads.
Indeed.
Heh, haven’t heard that term before — ‘a “Meanwhile…” book’.
Tangled Up in Blue (2000) by Joan D. Vinge (buy used, 3.67 on Goodreads)