Contact Imminent

Rating:
Summary: Her Priestly Duties
Review: Contact Imminent is the fourth novel in the Jani Kilian series, following Law of Survival. In the previous volume, Jani has solved the mystery of Le Blond, the point man for a semi-legitimate trade association and the man trying to smear the reputation of both Jani and Tsecha. Ceel, the Oligarch of the Vynsharau, and his suborn Shai have managed to ease Tsecha out of his positions as ambassador and Propitiator, but Tsecha regains most of his status as Intercessor for the Haarin; moreover, now he doesn't have to attend any more boring meetings, can sit in comfortable chairs and doesn't have to wear boring clothes. Furthermore, he and Jani have forced Shai to allow the Haarin to sell a much needed water filter to the Elyans.

In this novel, a year later, Jani, Niall and Tsecha are observers for a mine removal operation on the grounds of the Haarin enclave at Chicago. Something goes wrong and the mine explodes, killing a Terran bomb disposal tech and an idomeni security suborn and injuring Lieutenant Pullman. Jani is suspicious of the official explanations for this incident; since she is leaving for the Outer Circle on business for Tsecha, she asks Lucien to join the investigation team to uncover the true situation.

Jani travels to Elyas in a Neoclona ship with John Shroud and Niall. There she is kidnapped and transported to a Haarin colony, where she finds hybrids much like herself. Soon she is in the middle of a political conflict in the Haarin community between the established dominant and a hybrid challenger.

Back on Earth, Lucien singles out Faber, a comtech who had been on the bomb site in the bunker with Jani and who has been acting strangely since the incident. Lucien has Faber followed and keeps showing up in the comtech's life. Among other things, he notices that Faber is checking out the specs of the latest model military exoskeleton armor.

This novel is an investigative procedural on Earth and a character study on Elyas, with various side stories. Although the author tells part of the story from the viewpoint of Faber, she is able to maintain the suspense up until the final climax. You probably will not want to put the book down until the story is done.

In this story, Jani starts taking on some of the responsibilities of Tsecha's suborn. She acts as more that Tsecha's Eyes and Ears on Elyas, stabilizing the hybrid challenge in a very priestly manner and then gathering a cadre to keep the situation under control after she returns to Earth. While the immediate problems are resolved, this story ends with the promise of more excitement to follow.

Highly recommended for Smith fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of suspense and intrigue, with a touch of romance, in a SF setting.

Rating:
Summary: Her Priestly Duties
Review: Contact Imminent is the fourth novel in the Jani Kilian series, following Law of Survival. In the previous volume, Jani has solved the mystery of Le Blond, the point man for a semi-legitimate trade association and the man trying to smear the reputation of both Jani and Tsecha. Ceel, the Oligarch of the Vynsharau, and his suborn Shai have managed to ease Tsecha out of his positions as ambassador and Propitiator, but Tsecha regains most of his status as Intercessor for the Haarin; moreover, now he doesn't have to attend any more boring meetings, can sit in comfortable chairs and doesn't have to wear boring clothes. Furthermore, he and Jani have forced Shai to allow the Haarin to sell a much needed water filter to the Elyans.

In this novel, a year later, Jani, Niall and Tsecha are observers for a mine removal operation on the grounds of the Haarin enclave at Chicago. Something goes wrong and the mine explodes, killing a Terran bomb disposal tech and an idomeni security suborn and injuring Lieutenant Pullman. Jani is suspicious of the official explanations for this incident; since she is leaving for the Outer Circle on business for Tsecha, she asks Lucien to join the investigation team to uncover the true situation.

Jani travels to Elyas in a Neoclona ship with John Shroud and Niall. There she is kidnapped and transported to a Haarin colony, where she finds hybrids much like herself. Soon she is in the middle of a political conflict in the Haarin community between the established dominant and a hybrid challenger.

Back on Earth, Lucien singles out Faber, a comtech who had been on the bomb site in the bunker with Jani and who has been acting strangely since the incident. Lucien has Faber followed and keeps showing up in the comtech's life. Among other things, he notices that Faber is checking out the specs of the latest model military exoskeleton armor.

This novel is an investigative procedural on Earth and a character study on Elyas, with various side stories. Although the author tells part of the story from the viewpoint of Faber, she is able to maintain the suspense up until the final climax. You probably will not want to put the book down until the story is done.

In this story, Jani starts taking on some of the responsibilities of Tsecha's suborn. She acts as more that Tsecha's Eyes and Ears on Elyas, stabilizing the hybrid challenge in a very priestly manner and then gathering a cadre to keep the situation under control after she returns to Earth. While the immediate problems are resolved, this story ends with the promise of more excitement to follow.

Highly recommended for Smith fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of suspense and intrigue, with a touch of romance, in a SF setting.

Rating:
Summary: What is one to say?
Review: I have found in the science fiction I have read very few books about the contacts between mankind and different species worthwhile. The one I have liked best so far is Westerfeld's 'Fine Prey', without any doubt related to the fact that I love language above many other things. Kristine Smith's four part tale of Jani, the hybrid, the priest, the lover, the woman and her men is of a different order. It's compelling, it's a great read and a tremendous effort to put the books down. It's fascinating, the war-like description of the meeting of two species through the eyes of an outcast, a borderline case. And the distance Kristine makes her characters travel is significant and most certainly worth it. The one thing that I find makes Kristine's writing different from 'Fine Prey', as well as from Lyda Morehouse's most brilliant approach to different-ness, is the roughness in the telling, the edges in the flow and the occassional jumpiness of the perspective. If you start, start with the beginning: code of conduct. Kristine finds difference-ness in the most violent of humanish: the military. It's worth the exploration!

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: I'll admit to being a bit disappointed in the latest installment of this series. The first couple of books were action packed, but the pace seems to have slowed in this book. The stakes for Jani aren't quite as high, and for much of the book she seems to be reacting to situations rather than trying to take charge.

That's not to say that I didn't like it. Smith has created a fascinating and believable alien culture, and the conflicts as the idomeni and humans interact are very well drawn. There are characters that you care about, and an interesting evolution in Jani's personal life.

On its own merits it's a good read, even if it isn't quite up to her earlier novels.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not great
Review: I'll admit to being a bit disappointed in the latest installment of this series. The first couple of books were action packed, but the pace seems to have slowed in this book. The stakes for Jani aren't quite as high, and for much of the book she seems to be reacting to situations rather than trying to take charge.

That's not to say that I didn't like it. Smith has created a fascinating and believable alien culture, and the conflicts as the idomeni and humans interact are very well drawn. There are characters that you care about, and an interesting evolution in Jani's personal life.

On its own merits it's a good read, even if it isn't quite up to her earlier novels.

Rating:
Summary: excellent space opera
Review: It is such a large universe that the sentient races should co-exist peacefully but that is not the case. Although humans and idomeni have enclaves on each other's home worlds there is little trust between the races and much fear. Jani Killian is, thanks to a medical practitioner that saved her life, a hybrid, part humanoid and part idomeni. She has one foot in each world but the humans fear her for what she has become and what it could mean to the human race.

Even though it is treason, zealots, who hate the Idomeni and want them to leave human space, are using violent means to start a war. Some factions of the Idomeni want to use Jan to further their own agenda but the hybrid is a strong-willed independent thinker who will use whatever means at her disposal to make certain that there will be peace between the two races.

Kristine Smith knows how to tell a fascinating story about two races in conflict with each other because each is xenophobic. The heroine is a master of diplomacy who wants the best for two races and favors neither when it involves xenophobic plots and politics. The culture of the Idomeni is complex and alien but not dangerous to humans unless they provoke them. CONTACT IMMINENT is a stellar example of excellent space opera.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: excellent space opera
Review: It is such a large universe that the sentient races should co-exist peacefully but that is not the case. Although humans and idomeni have enclaves on each other's home worlds there is little trust between the races and much fear. Jani Killian is, thanks to a medical practitioner that saved her life, a hybrid, part humanoid and part idomeni. She has one foot in each world but the humans fear her for what she has become and what it could mean to the human race.

Even though it is treason, zealots, who hate the Idomeni and want them to leave human space, are using violent means to start a war. Some factions of the Idomeni want to use Jan to further their own agenda but the hybrid is a strong-willed independent thinker who will use whatever means at her disposal to make certain that there will be peace between the two races.

Kristine Smith knows how to tell a fascinating story about two races in conflict with each other because each is xenophobic. The heroine is a master of diplomacy who wants the best for two races and favors neither when it involves xenophobic plots and politics. The culture of the Idomeni is complex and alien but not dangerous to humans unless they provoke them. CONTACT IMMINENT is a stellar example of excellent space opera.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Solidly Entertaining
Review: Jani is the first genetically-engineered human-idomeni hybrid. Humans and idomeni do not have idyllic relations and Jani is not completely trusted on either side. She does serve as a bridge for communications. Contact Imminent begins with an attempted mine disposal on the grounds of the idomeni enclave near Chicago. The deaths resulting from the explosion of the mine increase the tension between the two races. Xenophobic zealots on both sides are plotting death and destruction.

Tsecha, Jani's idomeni dominant, asks her to travel to the planet Elyas in his place, to try to stave off civil war among the idomeni. She travels with Niall Pierce, a Service officer, and John Shroud, the doctor who saved her life by making her a hybrid. Before they leave, they discover the possibility that there might be another hybrid on Elyas. Upon arrival, Jani is thrust into the middle of the leadership crisis and the related existance of an entire enclave of hybrids. Jani must remain independent of the two factions and act quickly to keep peace among the idomeni.

In the meantime, Jani's friend Lucien remains on Earth to investigate the mine explosion. In the process, he finds a human plot to attack the embassy in order to drive the idomeni out of human space. While trying to warn the embassy about the attack, he is challenged to a duel by the hostile idomeni Ghos. Jani and Niall have to race back to Earth, hopefully in time for the duel and the attack.

Author Kristine Smith does and excellent job presenting a complex and well-realized alien culture, complete with religion and politics. Jani is a very strong character who is strugging with her identity as a hybrid. Smith gives us a good view of Jani's internal turmoil as she deals with her human and idomeni relationships. The supporting cast is fairly well developed, although without reading the previous novels, their motivations aren't always clear.

Contact Imminent is the fourth novel in the Jani Kilian series. It can be read stand-alone, but the start can seem a little slow as you figure out the backstory from clues. Once you get settled in and comfortable with the setting, the story takes off and it's hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Jani returns to the colonies
Review: This tale, the fourth in the Jani Kilian series, has a kick to it. Kristine Smith, smart and sophisticated (she throws in quotes from John Donne) has been a great writer since her debut novel, "Code of Conduct," and she's improved each time out. In "Contact Imminent," she's conquered her one weakness--plotting. In the past I got the feeling sometimes Ms. Smith confused even herself, but not this time. Things just hum along (the climax is a masterpiece of cross-cutting action that's positively cinematic) as Jani, the hybrid human-idomeni, is sent on an intricate mission, in the course of which she finds a club that would want to have her as a member--and it's one she actually wishes to join, too.

The members of her mob are all back--the Shakespeare-quoting Naill, the semi-smarmy Lucien, her doctor chum John who hybridized her in order to save her life, the crafty idomeni leader Tsecha. They're always true to Jani in their fashion--for the most part anyhow, as for the most part they all have their own agendas.

And then Ms. Smith introduces a new character, the terrorist Micah Faber; and through his character she speculates on the idea of virtual reality via hypnosis: a fascinating concept.

As with the previous novels this one is complete in itself. There are no cliffhanger endings. It's clear Ms. Smith has plans for more books in the series, but they'll come at her own pace. At the back of the paperback edition you will not find a preview first chapter of the next book in the series, which in some sense is a blessing although you'll probably grab the next one as soon as it appears.

Notes and asides: Naill refers to MacBeth as "The Scottish Play" because actors consider it to be bad luck to speak the play's true name. One would suppose that Ms. Smith has made Chicago the capital of her "Commonwealth" because she lives in Northern Illinois, as her biography makes perfectly clear.

Rating:
Summary: Jani returns to the colonies
Review: This tale, the fourth in the Jani Kilian series, has a kick to it. Kristine Smith, smart and sophisticated (she throws in quotes from John Donne) has been a great writer since her debut novel, "Code of Conduct," and she's improved each time out. In "Contact Imminent," she's conquered her one weakness--plotting. In the past I got the feeling sometimes Ms. Smith confused even herself, but not this time. Things just hum along (the climax is a masterpiece of cross-cutting action that's positively cinematic) as Jani, the hybrid human-idomeni, is sent on an intricate mission, in the course of which she finds a club that would want to have her as a member--and it's one she actually wishes to join, too.

The members of her mob are all back--the Shakespeare-quoting Naill, the semi-smarmy Lucien, her doctor chum John who hybridized her in order to save her life, the crafty idomeni leader Tsecha. They're always true to Jani in their fashion--for the most part anyhow, as for the most part they all have their own agendas.

And then Ms. Smith introduces a new character, the terrorist Micah Faber; and through his character she speculates on the idea of virtual reality via hypnosis: a fascinating concept.

As with the previous novels this one is complete in itself. There are no cliffhanger endings. It's clear Ms. Smith has plans for more books in the series, but they'll come at her own pace. At the back of the paperback edition you will not find a preview first chapter of the next book in the series, which in some sense is a blessing although you'll probably grab the next one as soon as it appears.

Notes and asides: Naill refers to MacBeth as "The Scottish Play" because actors consider it to be bad luck to speak the play's true name. One would suppose that Ms. Smith has made Chicago the capital of her "Commonwealth" because she lives in Northern Illinois, as her biography makes perfectly clear.