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Rating: 
Summary: A fine followup to Preternatural
Review: Karen Rohmer Guerreri [note 1], a lower-midlist SF writer, is having
trouble selling a new book. "Maybe you need to write a sequel," her
agent advises. "This time, don't make it so autobiographical." Arch
metafictional milling-about ensues, but don't be put off by the slow
start -- by p. 58 Karen has been snatched from her bed at the Days Inn,
and dumped onto a straw pallet in Eleanor of Aquitane's Brittany --
the start of a long, strange trip through Julius Ceasar's Gaul, the fall of
Berlin in 1945, and several alternate Nows. P2G's unhinging of time
reminds me of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, and Karen's
working-out of her predicament is as intricate and recursive as the
best of Philip K. Dick. Readers of Preternatural won't be surprised to learn that it's Fuschia,
that naughty S. oteri, one of the telepathic ET jellyfish who inspired
and bedeviled Karen in the first book, up to hir old tricks -- the S.
oteri live in the Long Now, and have trouble with the idea of
sequential time. You don't need to have read the first book to enjoy
the second, but if you liked the first, you're probably already headed
for the bookstore and I'm preaching to the choir.... Anyway, if you're
new to MWB, it would make sense to start with P1, which is out in
paperback (Tor, $6, ISBN: 0812567641). They're both pretty amazing
books. In both books, you need to pay close attention to all the balls in the
air, but when MWB's running a hot hand, like Joe Slattermill in Fritz
Leiber's wonderful "Gonna Roll the Bones" [note 2], her aim is
true and her eye (and pen) unerring, She can be trusted to bring
matters to a satisfying conclusion, with tantalizing hints of more to
come: "She turned and headed straight for home, but she took the
long way, around the world." (with apologies to Mr. Leiber's shade) And while you're keeping your eye on the ball, you'll enjoy watching
MWB's characters come to life, notably her multiple alterselves and
their friends [note 3], while she ignores her agent's no-autobiography
advice -- or is she just counterfeiting Real Life exceptionally well? It
*is* fiction, after all, isn't it? -- and it's enormously entertaining
reading, which is what I look for, and, I'm sure, so do you.
_______________
Note 1.) Compare her maiden name to the RL author's .... 2.) Joe was a miner, and he could pitch 7 or 8 rocks back into place on
the face they'd fallen from, before gravity caught up and tumbled
them back down again. And when he got to the craps table -- "he felt
the power in his fingers..."
3.) MWB's women are spot-on, wonderfully real. Her men are a little
blurry (but well-hung). Hey, nobody's perfect.
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