Ragamuffin: Tobias S. Buckell

The Satrapy rules the 48 worlds with humans as 'pets' and research on most tech suppressed. What are the odds of that status quo maintaining?

Humans get a bum rap sometimes in SF. I mean, just because we're combative, inventive, don't subjugate well and are just plain hard to get along with, you'd think extermination would just be the easiest way to deal with us. Corporate American probably looked at that as an option back in the pre-space days, but couldn't pull it off without the clones.

The Satrapy evidently decided to use some individuals as pretty toys to to dress up and play with and then just flat shut off contact with any worlds that wouldn't kowtow to the repression of R&D on ways to blow up people who wanted to boss them around. ...at least that's what I think
happened; this is book two and book one is on it's way to me as I write.

No, I didn't order book one (Crystal Rain) until I finished off Ragamuffin; I've been burnt before on lame second novels . And while Tobias started this one out with one of the better clean action sequences it's ever been my pleasure to hang on to for the first section of a book, the swing to another location/POV/character-set in the second section put me on guard. And when he did it again, I was beginning to wonder what I had gotten into. So far we have an enclave escapee on the run, Aztecs sacrificing people, an ecography being destroyed and the bit tying it together is the bad guys?

But he pulled it all together. ...and nicely too. ...and even served up a decent space battle at the end. ...and while the first book isn't essential to be able to enjoy the second, I still want to know "why the Aztecs?" and a couple of other things that went on before our genetically engineered heroine left that hellhole in the first few pages of this one.

Five stars. ...and a cup of coffee for keeping awake to find out what happened when it all comes together in the last section.
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Hardcover: 320 pages
Publisher: Tor Books (June 12, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0765315076
ISBN-13: 978-0765315076
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