7 January 2008
Mark L. Van Name – One Jump Ahead
Posted by Dirk under: books .
Not a great book but it kept me interested long enough to finish it. If you like the military sub-genre of science fiction you’ll probably dig this.
The main character is an operative for hire with extensive military background and certain special abilities granted to him by some contact he had with some nanobots at some point in his past. He also acquires a slightly used military vessel during the course of the book. This tank reminds me a lot of the Bolos of Keith Laumer’s books. It can fly in space or atmosphere, is intelligent, has lots of nasty military hardware and is all around handy to have around when you’re in this guy’s line of work.
The nanobots he has in his body are kind of a cop out. He can do all kinds of stuff with them, like spitting into a handful of dirt and having the bots drift over and eat all the metal in a group of guys holding guns on him. It basically takes this from a sf book and makes it a fantasy book. Saying he can do this because of nanobots or because of magic doesn’t really matter.
I think this is one in a series with the same characters. I might some day look up some of the other books by this author, but it’s not on my ‘gotta find list’.