From archive (archive)
From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (Evelyn C. Leeper)
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Subject: Review: NAPOLEON DISENTIMED
Date: 28 Nov 87 14:54:52 GMT




		    NAPOLEON DISENTIMED by Hayford Peirce
		    Tor, 1987, ISBN 0-812-54898-1, $3.50.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
		       Copyright 1987 Evelyn C. Leeper

     This novel by Hayford Peirce (yes, that really is how it's spelled) is
the second in the "Ben Bova Discoveries" series (the first is Rebecca Ore's
BECOMING ALIEN).  From the introductory blurb, I get the impression that
Bova is attempting to imitate the "Ace Science Fiction Specials" series that
Terry Carr edited so successfully before his death.  But judging from this
novel--admittedly a very small sample, statistically speaking--Bova has a
ways to go.  While it's true that some of Carr's selections were somewhat
traditional science fiction (Kim Stanley Robinson's THE WILD SHORE, for
example), others like Shepard's GREEN EYES and Carter Scholz's PALIMPSESTS
were more unusual stylistic experiments.  NAPOLEON DISENTIMED is
straightforward time travel/alternate worlds science fiction (only in
science fiction could such a comment be more with a straight face!).

     The style seems inspired more by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's "Saint-Germain"
series than anything else--long, flowery descriptions of clothing,
furniture, and so on.  The idea is that there is this device, GODHEAD
(Gathering, Organizing, and Dispersing Holistically Extratemporal Autonomous
Device), which belonged to a scientific swami but somehow came into the
possession of the MacNair.  This device is a alternate worlds device (time
travel is also involved) and pretty soon people are skipping around from
world to world, meeting other versions of themselves, and getting involved
with a group trying to use time travel to overthrow Napoleon before he takes
(took?) over all of Europe.  None of it struck me as original, and the style
seemed to bog down the action.  Actually the whole thing reminded me of
nothing so much as a Jacobean drama of the sort the film THE DRAUGHTSMAN'S
CONTRACT was imitating.

     It is not fair to judge the series on the basis of a single book.  It
is certainly true that the "Ace Science Fiction Specials" had their share of
duds.  One must regret, for example, that the last book in that series, at
least under Carr, was Loren MacGregor's THE NET, a thoroughly average book.
So I will reserve judgement on this series until I sample one or two other
novels.  But, for me at least, it has gotten off to an inauspicious start.

					Evelyn C. Leeper
					(201) 957-2070
				UUCP:	ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl
				ARPA:	mtgzy!ecl@rutgers.rutgers.edu