| Author: George R.R. Martin | |
| Rating: 7.5 | Reviewer: Valashain |
| Genre: SciFi | Publisher:Harper Collins/Voyager |
| Pages: 394 | Orig Pub Date: September 2007 |
| Binding: Hardcover | Cover Illus.: Tony Sweet/Getty Images |
Hunter's Run is the novel length version of a story Shadow Twin, published by scifi.com in 2004. I can only file this review under one author so I put it under George R.R. Martin. Let there be no mistake about it though, this is a three-way collaboration between Martin, Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham. Gardner Dozois' work, despite him having won an awful lot of Hugo Awards, has yet to make it's way into our database. Daniel Abraham's work is represented by a review of his novel Shadows in Summer and a 2006 interview where both the novel Shadows in Summer as well as the novella Shadow Twin are discussed.
Hunter's Run is set in a future where mankind has reached the stars only to find out they were beaten to it by more advanced species. Advanced or not, none of these species have managed to solve the problem of communicating with places that are light years away fast enough to make it meaningful. There is no such thing as a galactic empire, legislation above the planetary level is symbolic at best. This hasn't stopped humanity from colonizing other planets though. One such place is Sao Paulo. It hasn't been settled long and the planet has quite a few places left that have yet to be explored.
This frontier mentality suits our main character, Ramon Espejo, just fine. He doesn't like people and prefers to be out on his own in the wild prospecting. People get on his nerve after a while. He only comes to town to drink away his money and spend time with Elana, with whom he has a violent relationship. At the opening of the book Ramon has managed to get himself into a bar fight. The fight ends with Ramon stabbing and killing his opponent. This is nothing new to Ramon or the bar he is visiting, but all hell breaks loose the next day when Ramon finds out he killed an off world diplomat. Ramon sees no other option that to go out into the unexplored north, beyond the reach of the law for a while. Maybe the authorities will find someone else to take the blame.
At ease again, away from people in general and the police in particular, Ramon sets to work on a promising mountainside. When he detonates one of his charges to obtain samples he inadvertently causes a landslide that exposes a alien base. These aliens obviously have gone through a lot of trouble to remain hidden and are not overjoyed Ramon found them. If he wasn't in trouble before he surely is now. From this point on Ramon's survival takes priority over all else.
Ramon is not a very likeable fellow. He thinks he is tough, I think he is a bastard. Ramon is selfish, violent and completely anti-social. On his trek through the wilderness he is forced to look into the mirror several times and examine his own decisions and motivations. You could say he redeems himself a little, although you could wonder at what price, but even at the end he is still a bastard. Personally I don't have a problem with that, I'm not familiar with the works of Dozois and Abraham but Martin's best characters usually have a dark streak. Ramon is a well developed character who struggles with questions about identity and self-knowledge. In the end it is not just survival he is looking for but also a measure of peace with himself. Most of the novel is set out in the wild so aren't that many other important characters. If a character like Ramon is not to your taste you will not like this novel. It is his show.
Three-way collaborations are pretty rare and the fact that this story has a history of being written and rewritten justifies the question of whether it hold up as a novel. It does. In fact, if you had told me one person wrote it all I would have believed it. I guess I am easily fooled. Both Martin and Dozois have done their share of editing in the past, this is where all that experience pays off. I have not read the novella version but the novel doesn't have the feel of a novella being blown up to reach the size of a novel. There was more of the story to tell obviously. It's a well written and, equally important, well edited novel. As always when Martin produces something that isn't A Song of Ice and Fire there will be people who think he threw it out there to keep his fans happy until the publication of A Dance with Dragons. That is clearly not doing the novel justice. It will not be ranked as the best work of any of the authors but it is definitely a good read.
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