He has a fine sarcastic sense of humor and the type of personality that works well with Angel. His team up with the huge, silent Fredoso is a great match. This dual angle where the talent is shown as both positive and negative gives Angel some real depth of character. Not only is it useful (in one case saving his and his partner's life) but also it makes it hard for him to have a relationship. He is a trained intuitive, which means he can read body language, not minds. It makes the setting much more concrete.Īngel is kind of a different character. It adds a great deal of texture to the world, sounds from the ever-yammering advertisement bots, the feeling that you're being watched from the sewers by tiny mechanical eyes. He has a flair for creating technology that seems like it ought to already be here, things that I am sure are only a handful of years away, but are still fantastical and unique. My favorite technology was totally Alan Dean Foster.he created tiny little artificial intelligence machines called wugs, who don't do anything, just follow around and watch. Napkins that kill bacteria using charges, force field underwear, little floating advertising robots that people bat away like flies. The technology is utterly cool.and completely believable. Montezuma Strip makes the rougher parts of New York look like a cakewalk. Things are a lot harder, both economically and physically, despite the promises created by technology. In this case, we are invited into a darker, harder world, a vision of the future that does not promise happiness for all. Usually his worldview is lighter, more optimistic. What's not common is that the DNA does not match the Ident pill, insisting that the victim is two different people one of which has a wife and daughter who suddenly turn up missing.įor long-time fans of Foster, you will find in this book an entirely different offering. On the Montezuma Strip in a dark future not that far away, such things are common. The fact that he has been completely cleaned out - everything from the change in his pockets to his eyes and bone marrow - has been stolen from him doesn't faze them much. Almost as a by-product of their primary training, good intuits invariably made spectacularly adept lip-readers.'Īngel Cardenas and his partner Fredoso Hyaki are not shocked by the corpse they find. Nevertheless, he was able to follow the gist of the conversation effortlessly.

Through their mouths moved, and Cardenas was not more than a couple meters from them, he could hear nothing. Hyaki was visible from within, conversing animatedly with Drosi Semagarya. 'Cardenas wound his way through the maze, past busy techs and beat officers and bureaucrats, dodging self-propelled messenger carts and food trays, until he found himself outside the office he sought.

(Reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer AUG 26, 2002)

Quozl alan dean foster