(official book-reviewer for the e-zine http://www.tgforum.com , always on the look out for good books of any genre)
Adrian DeBolt is the official book reviewer for the popular transgender ezine at
tgforum.com. By necessity pretty much locked into reading books with at
least some element of trangenderism, Adrian does occasionally manage to
fit in a book totally unrelated to the tgforum.com agenda. Sci-fi a
particular favorite, for just such unrelated unadulterated pure reading
pleasure, William Maltese's latest and just-released plot-lead sci-fi was
simply too enticing a temptation to resist.
http://www.tgforum.com
adriand@tgforum.com
BOND-SHATTERINGby William Maltese
TradeBook: 250 pages
Publisher: nighwares Books
ISBN: 0974254940
Fans of William Maltese (and they are legion) had better buckle their seat belts for the wild interstellar G-force ride he provides in this, his latest book, the sci-fi tour-de-force BOND-SHATTERING.
Part of Maltese’s international sales appeal has always been his willingness to dare to keep out of the writing rut that would have had any less chameleon novelist quickly and irreversibly boxed and labeled — as a short-story writer (after Maltese’s CALIFORNIA CREAMIN’ and other short stories) — as a romance writer (after his LOVE’S EMERALD FLAME) — as a children’s writer (after his DOG ON A SURFBOARD and the rest of the adventure) — as an erotic writer (after his CONSPIRACY OF RAVENS, lead book of his one-hand read® series).
His plot-lead BOND-SHATTERING pretty much is a complete one-eighty-degree turnabout from his best-selling sex-lead novel SLOVAKIAN BOY that came (no pun intended) just before it; SLOVAKIAN BOY an amusing voyeuristic cream-puff of a novel, filled to the brim with the always charming and delicious sexual cavorting of bucolic East-European studs reminiscent of those made popular in Bel Ami videos. And to someone unfamiliar with Maltese’s long history of genre explorations (see his web-site at http://www.williammaltese.com for a genuinely comprehensive listing of his over one-hundred books to date), BOND-SHATTERING might well seem to be the author venturing, once again, into new-genre territory. Except, sci-fi is not only familiar terrain for the author, although he’s been a long-time getting back to it, but it was what his very first book (FIVE ROADS TO TLEN, back in 1970) was all about. And, then, there were ten sci-fi/fantasy books written by him, under various pseudonyms, in the 80’s.
What Maltese’s long absence from the sci-fi genre has done is to hone, even more so, the author’s already existent skills and story-telling abilities, allowing him to provide the readers of this one with not only a complicated and detailed and believable Warrior Clan Universe, women the result of a literal celestial experiment gone awry, but with peoples (“civilized” and “barbarian”) within that created cosmos who exhibit a whole gamut of believably varied and diverse machinations that include murder, jealousy, love, hate, pettiness, war of the worlds, treachery, betrayal, bigotry, male chauvinism, religion gone awry, genocide, and revenge. All of it played out against the exotic but totally believable backdrop of whole worlds hell-bent on eradicating and/or isolating other worlds while under the spell of the essence Orchinid (think an aphrodisiac far kinkier, but in just as much demand, than the spice of Frank Herbert’s DUNE), that’s exclusively harvested/mined on the anything-but-benign Planet Jirat.
There’s a lot going on in this book’s 250 pages, pretty much progressing at break-neck speeds. Nor, amid his always fascinating and challenging plot-line, has Maltese completely forgotten sex (nor logically could he, considering the very nature of essence Orchinid). Topping it all off nicely with a gay love story (for die-hard romantics) that initially seems to be between two members of the Warrior Clan but just might, in the end, actually be between a Warrior Clan warrior and a (forbidden) barbarian.
BOND-SHATTERING provides a plethora of great reading — for sci-fi/fantasy fans, for romance fans, for fans of gay/male adventure. If there are liable to be cries of “misogyny!” even possibly from Maltese’s large female fan-base, those who make that accusation would do well to remember that Maltese, in his CRYSTAL OF POWER series of sci-fi novels, in the 80’s, introduced a Supreme Deity who, much to the chagrin of her male counterparts (and of Maltese’s male readers, at the time), was all woman (at least until she evolved).
BOND-SHATTERING: a great-good read that only enhances Maltese’s reputation as an author who can steadily produce a seemingly never-ending run of literary (and not-so-literary) excellence, no matter what his chosen genre-of-the-moment.
END