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| 3.5 out of 5 stars |
It is here that the fate of Morn Hyland is to be decided amid a kaleidoscopic whirl of plot and counterplot, treachery and betrayal.
As schemes unravel to reveal yet deeper designs, Morn, Nick, Angus' lives may all be forfeit as pawns in the titanic game played our between Warden Dios, dedicated director of the UMC Police, and the Dragon, greed-driven ruler of the UMC. Here, the future of humankind hangs on the uncertain fortune of Morn Hyland in a daring novel of epic power and suspense, relentlessly gripping from first page to last.
I have made no secret of the fact that I struggle with Stephen Donaldson’s writing. This is the only series of his that I have made any connection with, and my relationship to it is turbulent. I’m not one of those people who needs to like the characters in order to like the book, but it helps if I care what happens to them. I reluctantly care about what happens to the main characters in the Gap series.
Its like Donaldson took the Star Trek universe and turned it inside out. There is no Prime Directive, no Starfleet, no honourable oversight by basically good-intentioned people. Like in C.J. Cherryh’s Company Wars series, it is the giant corporation that controls space and with the United Mining Companies comes the shadowy director, also known as the Dragon, who seeks to control everything.
In many ways, this is a bleaker, darker version of Cherryh’s idea of the megacorporation running outer space, like Glen Cook’s The Black Company running the universe. I had to order this volume through interlibrary loan, but I’ve got the remaining books from the local used book store, so finishing the series is a very likely proposition.
Book number 316 in my Science Fiction & Fantasy reading project.
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