Subject: Crawford: Rouse a Sleeping Cat

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1993 04:47:05 GMT

I once took a Business Policy course that touched, in one class, on the
Laser sf line, so we talked about how people decide which sf books to buy.
I was listing what I thought were the obvious factors -- author, good
recommendations, covers -- when someone broke in to protest that sf readers
weren't swayed by covers.

Not that there's anything special about the cover of Dan Crawford's
"Rouse a Sleeping Cat" (a title which has nothing to do with the contents
of the book), but since I'd never heard of book or author before, and
since the cover's plot summary was uninformative, I can't think of what
else motivated me to get this book.

It's not bad.  The writing is deft and witty -- enough so to compensate
for the subject matter, which is slightly appalling.

Rossacotta is a country-sized robbers' den which is in the process of
civilizing itself.  Very early in the process.  The king is nine years
old, which makes things marginally more insecure than usual.  The regent
is a wicked necromancer.  No, he isn't plotting to seize the throne; he's
one of the relatively *good* guys.  So is Nimnestl, the chief bodyguard,
who has to find the murderer of a popular artist, so that she and the
regent can decide who the best person would be to pin it on.  (It's not
really clear whether or not Rossacotta has a *law* against leaving a
trail of corpses.  Certainly little else is illegal.)

The cover describes the book as the first of a series, but fortunately
it stands up perfectly well as a stand-alone novel.  

This isn't one of the year's better novels (why do I keep reading and
reviewing books from the middle of the midlist?) but the writer *does*
know his craft, and I imagine I'll be reading the sequel when it appears.

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

  Watership Down:  
  You've read the book.  You've seen the movie.  Now eat the stew!