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dustydigger
Posted 2016-02-09 9:15 AM (#12631 - in reply to #12239)
Subject: Re: Pick and Mix 2016		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		Wow,FINALLY completed my first SF book for a month,Alan Dean Foster's Icerigger
While I had no computer my online read of Alan Dean Foster's Icerigger was wiped off ,timed out,but fortunatelythere was another copy turned uo quickly and I polished off the last 50 pages at a gallop.
Some people,SF purists, tend to curl the lip a bit at ADF because he does lots of novelisations of films and pulpy stuff,but I have always found his books,no matter how slight ,are just good relaxing fun,perfect lighter reads. He has a smooth flowing style,glints of humour and engaging characters,and the pace is light speed rip roaring adventure. In Icerigger a salesman,Ethan Fortune,a huge Viking like crewman and a small geeky schoolteacher are inadvertantly swept up by kidnappers as they stumble into the abduction of a billionaire and his daughter,and are dragged away in a space shuttle,It then crashes on an icy planet,which is a balmy 0 degrees Fahrenheit at the equator in summer. There is a human outpost at the opposite side of the planet. The local city-state is about to be engulfed by a Horde of barbarians,so in return for the humans' help,with a judicuous amount of gunpowder,the use of crossbows and other minor infringements of the Prime Directive,against the brtal tribe,the locals build them a ship with duralloy sort of skis for their icerigger,and off they go across the frozen seas world,with various adventures,including an erupting volcano,religious fanatics who want to sacrifice them, a return engagement with the Horde,and attacks by vast creatures that would make a earthly whale look like a tiddler. Huge fun, a nostalgic re-read and of course I must now reread the rest of the trilogy .
I am now reading Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia for my 1975 book in the 70s Defining Book challenge,plus Simon R Green's The Dark Side of the Road,an odd mix with an alien masquerading as a human, and a sort of cozy crime story,when the alien hero's boss is found beheaded during a country house Xmas house party,when a group of people are isolated by huge snowstorms. The murderer is among them! Good fun so far.

Edited by dustydigger 2016-02-09 9:22 AM

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