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[amazon.co.uk]
Assassin Axl Borja, arrested during his latest hit, will do almost anything to stay alive - including calling in favours from the Cardinal, who has problems of his own, including the fact that the church is bankrupt. Meanwhile, Borja's gun, which managed to escape his fate, has plans of its own. Finally, a dying priest, loyal to the late Pope who spent all the money, has kidnapped a japanese child prostitute and taken her to the orbital space habitat Samsara for reasons that she doesn't understand.
I have to say, this book just didn't work for me at all (which is the main reason it's taken me a month or more to write this). There's nothing wrong with the prose, but the plot just seemed like happenstance. I couldn't get any kind of a grip on the motivations of the main character, who seemed to flick back and forth between stupid and omniscient, obedient servant and independent-minded free agent.
Things that initially seemed like background details would suddenly become crucial plot points - which isn't a bad thing, except that there was never any explanation of WHY they were important. There were also several incidents that just had an overwhelming feeling of deus ex machina, which drives me nuts.
All told, the world portrayed seemed irredeemably dystopian, which always puts me off - I find the real world depressing enough, without making it worse.
It's not without merits. There were quite a few neat ideas, such as Borja's sentient gun and Samsara, but apart from the gun, these were mostly relegated to background detail, which was a problem, as I found them far more interesting than the main plot.
So, overall, not my thing at all.
Assassin Axl Borja, arrested during his latest hit, will do almost anything to stay alive - including calling in favours from the Cardinal, who has problems of his own, including the fact that the church is bankrupt. Meanwhile, Borja's gun, which managed to escape his fate, has plans of its own. Finally, a dying priest, loyal to the late Pope who spent all the money, has kidnapped a japanese child prostitute and taken her to the orbital space habitat Samsara for reasons that she doesn't understand.
I have to say, this book just didn't work for me at all (which is the main reason it's taken me a month or more to write this). There's nothing wrong with the prose, but the plot just seemed like happenstance. I couldn't get any kind of a grip on the motivations of the main character, who seemed to flick back and forth between stupid and omniscient, obedient servant and independent-minded free agent.
Things that initially seemed like background details would suddenly become crucial plot points - which isn't a bad thing, except that there was never any explanation of WHY they were important. There were also several incidents that just had an overwhelming feeling of deus ex machina, which drives me nuts.
All told, the world portrayed seemed irredeemably dystopian, which always puts me off - I find the real world depressing enough, without making it worse.
It's not without merits. There were quite a few neat ideas, such as Borja's sentient gun and Samsara, but apart from the gun, these were mostly relegated to background detail, which was a problem, as I found them far more interesting than the main plot.
So, overall, not my thing at all.