On-par sequel

I liked Drifter enough to pick up this sequel and give it a read. This book remembers the continuity established by its predecessor, but it doesn't pick up immediately where it left off. Instead, we join Pik Lando sometime later, when he's on the run and down on his luck. Even his beautiful new ship is gone.

Dietz's writing style doesn't change much, remaining at times satisfying and at times distracting. He does well in describing his characters, but very few of them really have very much development. Luckily, the ones who are developed to any great extent are the most important ones in the story.

The way this book is written makes each chapter feel like a new episode of an ongoing TV series. It seems as though Dietz couldn't think of any other way to flesh this book's story out, so he threw in a bunch of hardly consequential sub-plots that usually end the chapter after they begin. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it isn't exactly an award-winning idea, either.

The plot, such as it is, involves Lando joining the tiny crew of a tug ship called, appropriately, the Junk. The Captain spends most of his time inebriated, the engineer, Cy, is a floating cyborg orb (see the cover) and most of the business stuff is taken care of by the Captain's young daughter Melissa, who hires Lando. Lando proves to be a more effective father figure than Melissa's own father, and this is one of the really good points of the book. The relationship they build is a solid one, and it's hard to not feel sympathy for Melissa.

The book also has a few more humorous moments in it than the previous one, especially with Cy and various other machines. Cy, in fact, is good mainly for getting himself into trouble, though he manages to redeem himself in a big way later on.

This book ranks about equal with the first one. I may check out the third one at some point.

6/10