Monday, August 6, 2007

SPACEMAN BLUES: A Love Song, by Brian Francis Slattery

SPACEMAN BLUES: A Love Song by Brian Francis Slattery releases tomorrow, August 7th. Amazon has a bunch of review snippets on the book site, and one word that I keep encountering is "chaotic". It seems to be getting a great deal of review attention, more than I think I've seen so far. Here's the blurb from Tor's website:

When Manuel Rodrigo de Guzmán González disappears, Wendell Apogee decides to find out where he has gone and why. But in order to figure out what happened to Manuel, Wendell must contend with parties, cockfights, and chases; an underground city whose people live in houses suspended from cavern ceilings; urban weirdos and alien assassins; immigrants, the black market, flight, riots, and religious cults.

Painted in browns and grays and sparked by sudden fires, Spaceman Blues is a literary retro-pulp science-fiction-mystery-superhero novel, the debut of a true voice of the future, and a cult classic in the making.

There is a sample chapter available at the author's website. Interestingly, it is written in the present tense. It doesn't look too distracting, you may not even notice at first. Here's the opening sentence:

It is his last day, and by six in the morning he is already drinking, drinking and shot up, eyes frantic, limbs flailing like he's ready to explode.

The chapter headings are reminiscent of The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote and Candide, reading like this:

In Which a Man Disappears, and Several Parties Are Held

As for reviews? Try the Mumpsimus, Sci Fi Wire (John Joseph Adams), and the Agony Column at Trashotron. Plus, you can go to the author's website and find a bunch more review links here.

1 comment:

Kimber Li said...

Oh, cool! Sounds like my kind of story. Thanks for sharing.
:o)