Rating: 
Summary: Zahn falters
Review: When Timothy Zahn is at his best, there is nobody better. The Conquerors Trilogy deserves to be remembered as an all-time great, and The Icarus Hunt was a delightful action/suspense novel that keeps the reader on the edge of the seat. Angelmass, unfortunately, does not come close to Conquerors or Icarus. It is better than some of Zahn's middle-period works (like Triplet, for example), but not the five-star we'd been coming to expect. (And that's okay; we can't expect a writer to be perfect *every* time, can we?)Angelmass is a black hole that spits out "angels." What the angels are and how they affect humans is the center point of the novel, and often the science babble overwhelms the story. Characters here are often too wooden, and sometimes seem to be caricatures of previous Zahn characters (High Senator Forsythe reads like a dumbed-down version of Talon Karrde, for example). We learn on the last page to our astonishing lack of surprise that the two main characters are becoming romantically involved - a result both blatantly predictable and poorly developed. But then one doesn't read Zahn for character or romance, does one? Zahn is best at plotting and action, and Angelmass provides both. Zahn is a master of battle - both space battles and one-on-one combat, and there is enough of each here to please any Zahn fan. There's political intrigue, too, of course. In short, Zahn fans will find enough here to enjoy. Non-Zahn fans, however, may read this one and wonder what all the Zahn fuss is about.
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