Subject: Drake: The Voyage

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 04:39:19 GMT

David Drake's "Voyage" is set in the universe of Hammer's Slammers, which
means that it involves hard-bitten professional soldiers doing a lot of
damage.  Just as "Cross the Stars" was based on the Odyssey, "Voyage" is
based on the story of Jason and the Argonauts:  Lissea Doorman has been
promised her rightful heritage (a seat on the Board of Directors) if she
can retrieve a long-lost treasure (an invention which teleported to a now-
isolated planet), so she recruits a shipful of heroes (big-name mercenaries)
who stop at a number of planets on the way, having an adventure of sorts
at each one.

The parallels are very heavy-handed.  For example, instead of harpies
snatching food from a table, we have teleporters snatching food as it
comes out of the automatic food dispenser.  The monsters guarding the
treasure are tanks, which can be lulled into 'sleep' with a device which
they receive from the son of the local ruler.  (Lissea may be luckier than
Jason in her Medea.)  And so forth.

The plot structure doesn't lend itself that well to a novel:  Each stop
(and most of the stops are unconvincingly motivated) becomes the setting
for a separate, isolated (and often pointless) incident.  Most of the
incidents involve far more blood-letting than the law of averages would
require, but I suppose that's why carnophiles read carnography.  The book
is probably not bad mind-candy, for those readers whose favorite mind-candy
comes in the form of bloody gobbets.  I wouldn't recommend it else.

%A Drake, David
%T The Voyage
%I Tor
%C New York
%D January, 1994
%G ISBN 0-312-85158-8
%P 415 pp
%O US$23.95

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

   Should 'anal retentive' have a hyphen?
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