Subject: Hellflower: Archangel Blues

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 05:24:31 GMT

"Archangel Blues" is the third book in Eluki Bes Shahar's 'Hellflower'
trilogy.  I wouldn't rate it in the top ten books that have come out
in the past year, but the trilogy is one of the better space operas,
and worth reading.

I don't recommend starting with "Archangel Blues", as it doesn't make
too much sense if you haven't read the previous books, "Hellflower"
and "Darktraders".  (Besides, since "Hellflower" is the best of the
three, it makes a better first impression.)  

They're structured in good trilogy style:  "Hellflower" is an
almost-standalone adventure that introduces the milieu, and the main
characters.  Butterfly St. Cyr (that's one way to live down being
born "Butterflies-are-free Peace Sincere") is a smuggler who makes
the mistake of rescuing a Hellflower -- an honor-obssessed kid
from a warrior culture.  

In "Darktraders", we are introduced to the larger story:  The
Hellflower's troubles were part of a complex political plot.  The
plot is made even thicker as it becomes apparent that Butterfly's
forbidden-tech AI is much more forebidden than she realized --
being a representative of the technology that almost destroyed
humanity a millenium earlier.  "Archangel Blues" is the final
'chapter' of the story -- the one in which all the plotting
comes to fruition, or comes undone.  A good fun read.

One of the interesting features of the trilogy is the main
character's slang.  Nonstandard language usually gets in the
way of the story, but bes Shahar manages to maintain Butterfly's
idiosyncratic voice and idiom throughout, and still make it
support the characterization instead of simply slowing down
the reader.

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

"The death of God left the angels in a strange position."
	--Internal documentation, programmer unknown