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1. What happened to Julian May?When it first came out, years ago, I read and loved the Pliocene Exiles series. Julian May became one of my favorite authors of the era. Now I was younger then, so picking up this Perseus Spur book, I must conclude that one of two things has happened: either Julian May has never been very good, and my tastes have changes; or May's writing is deteriorating. Based on the other reviews I have seen here, I wonder if it may not be the latter!2) What's wrong with it?Oh, you know, everything. But worst of all: it reads like an awkward adolescent male fantasy while Julian May is in theory a female adult. The main character's painfully bad moves on the female interest are absolutely agonizing, at every step. Moreover, none of the characters are even remotely compelling. I couldn't care less who lives, who dies, or who ends up with whom. When they do eventually get it on, it is ick ick ick. Not to mention rather improbable.One thing I particularly remember about the Pliocene books was that they had vivid characters.But the characters in Perseus Spur are flat, uninteresting, and unpersuasive.3) The story.Helmut "Helly" Icicle, comes out of exile to rescue his family's galactic corporation. The rich good guys win, the rich bad guys lose, and the Helly's not-rich friends from exile are forgotten by chapter three (except for the one rich friend from exile, who hangs around to save the hero a couple of times).Bad things happen to Helly: his house is eaten by a sea monster. He is staked to a comet. He is trapped in an underground bunker with a bomb. A giant alien lizard falls on him. Good things happen to Helly: the bad fortunes of his exile are reversed, snivelling corporate weasels' jaws drop when they see him returned, he isn't killed by any of the bad things, he gets the girl.But in the end, you probably won't give two figs one way or the other.4) The best thing about the book?On the back cover is a blurb quotation from the above Amazon.co.uk review. When a publisher needs to go to Amazon to take a vaguely positive blurb out of context to help sell the book, you know they are scraping the bottom of the barrel.(Ooh, but look: Amazon quotes the amazon quote in the "From the back cover" section. It's like mirrors receding infinitely into the distance!)

I really enjoyed the Saga of the Exiles. I thought the characters were well developed and the plots satisfying. So I was expecting a lot from this book. I hesitate to criticise what seem to me to be its failings, since it is obviously meant to be light and not to be taken seriously. Certainly it is packed with action and there are some amusing situations. But it has a bit too much of a feel of it doesn't matter what obviously stupid decisions the hero makes, because the writer is on his side, and she'll make everything turn out OK. Oh, and kill off any character who becomes inconvenient, because we can always invent more characters, but you don't need to be sad about them, because they weren't real anyway. I'm not going to bother with the next one.

And this is no bad thing. As many others have pointed out, May's other books--wonderfully good reads themselves, by the way--are very much a different sort of thing than Perseus Spur. The Rampart books are indeed a throwback of sorts to the early sci-fi Lensmen books of EE Doc Smith, but they are full of today's style of brashness in writing as well.Which makes for a great read. This is a good book, with an interesting setting and a fun adventure. It is not a thinking cap book, like her other books, so if that is what you like, you might not like this book so much.And I agree--May must have had great fun writing this book, it would seem. It sure was fun to read it!

I've ben a fan of Juilian May since I read "Many Colored Land" quite a few years ago and I'm glad to see that she is still writing after she finished her Galactic Mileiu series. "Perseus Spur" is a little less cerebral than her last few book, but every bit as good. It also has a less ensemble cast of characters, but that just makes the action go even faster. The first person narratior is the sort of laid back hapless hero that you can't help but like and the plot has plenty of twists and turns to keep you awake. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

I loved it. The characters are well developed, especially the importance of family and family ties for the main character. The second book is even better, and has even more interesting plot twists and turns.