Deathstalker Rebellion Book

And that was when the roof fell in.

What a load of tosh! ...or is it?

What a peculiar reading experience. On an intellectual level, every fibre screams to put this down, but like a train without brakes you just keep going. And going. And going.

It's been ages since I read Deathstalker, and I apparently enjoyed it (I rated it 4). If ever a series fit the bill of "Fantasy in Space", or "Sword and Laser", it's this one. Deathstalker Rebellion is a weird bastard of a book, filled with contradictions inconsistencies, coincidences, unsubtlety and unintentional hilarity. Or, to put it differently, reading this goes accompanied by much rolling of eyes.

But Simon R. Green might just be the biggest magician of them all, since he is still able to pull the wool over the reader's eyes. Let's be brutally honest: this is the schlock fest of the century, like a head-on collision between Star Wars and Warhammer 40K which sort of damaged all the good parts of both. Expect bedlam, mayhem and other synonyms as well. Expect total sensory overload and a cavalier disregard for good taste and common sense…. and yet…

Not so much a review as a random collection of thoughts

Everything in here is cranked to eleven. Almost every character is an overblown caricature of sorts. (Quite literally, just about every other character is described as "one of the most dangerous men/women in the empire" or some such). The way everybody tries to out-bad-ass one another is, frankly, exhausting. One of the many things I found hard to swallow (and this in a genre that requires suspension of disbelief) was how the author used the Madness Maze of the previous book to conveniently explain all kinds of ludicrousness away; this doesn't make it any less Deus Ex Machina! Oh, so a character has suddenly manifested superhuman powers, conveniently suited to the situation at hand? Really?

With all the bucketloads of stuff happening in this novel, some of it is bound to be good though. Weird thing is, Owen Deathstalker himself doesn't actually feature that much at all, which is arguably just as well (I enjoyed the sequences with the "supporting cast", like Silence and Frost much more, for the most part). The concept of the Darkvoid is quite cool. The bit with the derelict ship Champion showed real promise. There are some really interesting locations, such as the industrial wasteland of Technos III. And, finally, the author does, on occasion, get the humour right.

The silliness is juxtaposed against a surprising level of violence, which has an unsettling effect. The book, frankly, gets quite grim and dark on occasion. The second half of the novel is the stronger half, so if you can make it past the halfway mark you're golden (but as with everything else here, that is a rather loose concept).

I'm not sure how much of this is satire / parody? The question is: should you care?
Despite all my griping, the book does have its moments. I can imagine that this series is extremely polarizing, but it will certainly appeal to some people. It all depends on how serious you want your Sci-Fi / fantasy to be, and how much you like your guilty pleasures. This is the literary equivalent of cheap booze mixed with sugary soda, or a bottom dollar prostitute, but whatever gets you there.

If nothing else, the novel kept me curious. I didn't particularly have to enjoy proceedings all that much to want to know what happened next. I'll give Deathstalker War a try, since it apparently concludes the first story arc, but unless it holds together better than this instalment, I can't really see myself continuing any further with the series.

"Can I go now, please? I was on my way to the toilet, and if anything, my need is even worse now than it was."