Subject: Specters of the Dawn by S. Andrew Swann

From: [email-masked] (Wayne Throop)
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 23:30:35 GMT

I just picked up the second and third books in the "franks and moreaus"
books by S.Andrew Swan.  The books are _Forrests_of_the_Night_,
_Emperors_of_the_Twilight_ and _Specters_of_the_Dawn_.  I ended
up reading the two end-to-end in a single day, so they are nicely
addictive.  Worth reading IMHO.

The moreaus are gengineered animals, designed for combat, and given
intelligence, and a more humanoid appearance, so they can take orders
and use existing military equipment.  Name from "The Island of Dr. 
Moreau".  The franks are gengineered humans, with various enhancements,
but most often for war or intelligence work (so they could actually do
the things James Bond is portrayed doing...).  Name from "Frankenstein". 

The general background is "after the Pan-Asian war", where technology
has suffered quite a setback, as Japan was on the losing side in a
world-war-sized war in which only the Americas largely stayed out of. 
Israel and India are nuked into oblivion in the 2010 timeframe, as is
Japan (so it's not just countries that begin with "I").  Refugee
remnants of moreau armies from all over the earth become the new US
immigration problem. 

The South American countries designed to be able to breed soldiers
fast, and so based their designs on rats, rabbits and the such.
England and Ireland used foxes.  The Afghans and Pakastani used
dogs, to create loyal pack-oriented military units.  Others used
bears, others panthers and cougars.

The Indians used tigers, and the series starts out following the
second-generation Indian immigrant Nohar Rajasthan, a 2.5 meter 300
kilogram tiger-derived moreau, who has gone into the Private
Investigator business in Cleveland.  He accepts an improbably lucrative
assignment, and immediately gets mixed up with Afghani assasins, the
radical moreau underground, and government corruption. 

The second book picks up some years later, told from the point of view
of Evi Isham, an Israeli frank working for the US intelligence community. 
Her character had been introduced in the first book.  James-Bond-like,
she is attacked mysteriously by the forces of SPECTRE... well, by
somebody anyway, and mayhem ensues.

The third book picks up again an even shorter time later, and follows
the activities of Angel Lopez, a rabbit moreau, and again a character
introduced in the first book.  She too gets mixed up in mysterious
goings-on, and mayhem ensues.  In the third book, we also get to
meet some franks adapted for direct (enhanced)human-to-computer hookup,
and it is packaged with a timeline for the general background of the
series.

The cover art is uniformly pretty good, by the way, and actually seems
to depict the characters at lest minimally according to their descriptions.
Little mistakes like makeing the sclera of Evi's eyes green when it was
said that the *retina*s had a green reflective effect that could be seen
(presumably a "green-eye" effect like that of nocturnal animals like cats
"red eye").  But at least not embarassingly bad, IMHO.

Not that the books aren't flawed.  The moreaus seem a bit too much like
humans in fur, and while one can argue that they were designed that way,
I wouldn't expect quite so much *success* at such designs.  The underlying
plotline never seems to really go anywhere much... each book claims to
have blown the lid off of it, but the next book start up the same basic
mystery again, ringing only slight changes on the theme.

But there's a detailed, rich background to grok, while being taken on
a roller-coaster of an action-adventure ride.  While all the elements
don't quite ring true, they *do* ring enjoyable, and once you accept the
basic background elements, they are deployed admirably well.

%A Swann, S. Andrew
%T Forrests of the Night
%I DAW
%C New York
%D 1993

%A Swann, S. Andrew
%T Emperors of the Twilight
%I DAW
%C New York
%D January 1994
%G ISBN 0-88677-589-2

%A Swann, S. Andrew
%T Specters of the Dawn
%I DAW
%C New York
%D August 1994
%G ISBN 0-88677-613-9

--
Wayne Throop   [email-masked]
               [email-masked]