awakeDAW Books, paperback
368 pages, science fiction comedy detective spoof noir weirdness blue-haired telepath party
Currently in print
***
The adventures of Zachary Nixon Johnson, the last private investigator on Earth, have now gone on for long enough to bring us to a fifth volume, The Blue-Haired Bombshell. I'm honestly starting to wonder whether we're going to run out of hair colors before Zach runs out of breakable bones. Which begs the question of what the poor man's medical insurance bills must look like. Ouch.
At this point in the series, I have to recommend that you go back to the beginning, and don't start here. Not only have we reached the usual level of fifth-book-complexity -- everyone has a history with everyone else, characters from all the earlier books keep showing up, and the fact that Zach has now worked for almost every powerful woman on the planet comes up more than once -- but some of the relationships are a lot more interesting if you know how they evolved. All the books are still in print, and the first few remain my favorites, so it's a worthwhile use of your time. Promise.
This is John Zakour's second solo effort in the series, and included a continuity error that left me slack-jawed with 'they let you get away with that?' amazement. Seriously. When the second book in a series is called The Doomsday Brunette, don't you think the author might remember the main character's hair color? But I suppose we can't have everything we want in life, and if he wants the Thompson Quads to be blonde, I guess I won't complain. Much.
The Blue-Haired Bombshell is a pretty standard Zachary Nixon Johnson adventure, boasting psychics whose powers are just undefined enough to make them capable of damn near anything the plot demands, witty repartee, genetically engineered gorillas, dames who are both devastatingly beautiful and, well, simply devastating, and a great many opportunities for people to beat the crap out of Zach. He is the therapy doll of bad guys everywhere. Poor man. He's also still dating Electra, which makes me happy, although I really hope they get around to a wedding sooner than later.
As usual, the plot is a little meandering, basically providing an excuse for all the things I've listed above to keep on happening. It continued to reduce the noir (a trend first noticed in The Frost-Haired Vixen) and increase the science fiction elements, which may prove to be a good thing once the period of transition is done. I'm still enjoying this series, although perhaps a little less whole-heartedly than I was at first; I want to see where it's going to wind up.
October 13 2008, 00:02:05 UTC 8 years ago
And yes, I am. :) I'm really excited about DucKon! I'm also the Seanan McGuire whose first trilogy is Coming Real Soon Now from DAW Books, which accounts for much of the local hysteria and wibbling.
October 13 2008, 16:54:10 UTC 8 years ago
October 13 2008, 18:27:30 UTC 8 years ago