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From: schulman@michael.nmr.upmc.edu (Christina Schulman)
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Subject: _Mistwalker_ by Denise Lopes Heald
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Date: 6 Jul 1994 00:43:32 GMT
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_Mistwalker_ by Denise Lopes Heald

The planet Ver Day is a frontier world covered with jungle.  This isn't
the Tarzan-movie sort of jungle where you can run around in nothing but
a loincloth without losing your skin.  The green is a hostile, insect-
ridden wilderness full of ravening beasties, kudzu's foul-smelling but
edible twin, face-sucking flowers, and bugs, bugs, bugs.  Bugs the size of
your fist that explode into stench, bugs with billions of legs that attach
themselves to your skin when you're not looking, and bugs that crawl under
your face netting and just generally make your life miserable.  And the
constant sweltering heat doesn't make life in the green any more pleasant.
(But for the lack of Spanish moss and palmetto scrub, it's very reminiscent
of North Florida in July.)

The jungle is so pervasive that the descendants of the original human
settlers have actually turned green.  Newbie immigrants, despised by
the greenies for their destructive behavior and dependence on tech, are
posing a serious threat to the preservation of the green.  (I suspect
that Usenet veterans are likely to appreciate a vocabulary in which the
epithet "yellow-pissin' newbie" is the height of contempt.)

The most dangerous inhabitants of the green are the reclusive mistwalkers,
which can fatally poison a human with the scratch of a claw.  The human
settlers learned quickly that irritating or startling a mistwalker is a
very quick route to a very ugly death.  So the settlers are careful not
to cut down indigenous trees, or drop trash in the jungle, or use much in
the way of non-biodegradable technology; and the mistwalkers leave the
humans alone.  Except for when they don't leave the humans alone.

Sal Banks is a greenie packer, a delivery person who hauls goods through
the green in a hand-powered sled.  She hires newbie Meesha Raschad to
help her haul an unusually heavy load.  The two of them have to cope not
only with the usual lethal dangers of the green, but also with government
corruption, spacer ambushes, greenie prejudice against newbies, and the
mistwalkers' inexplicable fascination with Raschad.

This is not a book that will give you a warm fuzzy.  This is a book that
will give you the creepy-crawlies, and sudden fits of scratching at non-
existent itches, and a newfound appreciation for clean beds without bedbugs.
The story is good but unremarkable, although it does consistently improve
throughout the book, and the romance is sweet without being saccharine.  It
fails to tie up quite a few dangling threads, but not in such a way that it
screams "Sequel!"

It's the extroardinarily vivid picture that Heald paints--mostly in shades
of green--of a dangerous jungle world and the ways in which humans have
adapted to survive it that make _Mistwalker_ absorbing and memorable.

As long as I'm saying nice things about a Del Rey Discovery, let me take
a moment to praise the Discovery line in general.  I've read about half
of them now, and while they have a tendency to suffer from first-novel
faults--I found _Ammonite_ a bit preachy, for example, and _Dancer of the
Sixth_ tangled itself with improbable romantic complications at the expense
of a more interesting plot--on the whole, they're interesting books with
original ideas.  And it's great to see some promotional effort being spent
on new authors; I'd never have even noticed _Mistwalker_ if it hadn't had
that white "Discovery" banner emblazoned across the front cover.

%A   Heald, Denise Lopes
%T   Mistwalker
%I   Del Rey
%C   New York
%D   July 1994
%G   ISBN 0-345-38890-9
%P   332 pp
%O   paperback, US$4.99
%O   A Del Rey Discovery

-- 
Christina Schulman   Pittsburgh NMR Institute   schulman@michael.nmr.upmc.edu