Reviews of The Kif Strike Back

This file contains reviews by

Duane Morse

by Duane Morse (duane@anasazi.UUCP)

Date: ???

The cover reads:

"Chanur's Revenge. Kif Power. Hani Pride... When the kif seized Hilfy and Tully, hani and human crew of "The Pride of Chanur", they issued a challenge Pyanfar, captain of "Pride", couldn't ignore, a challenge that was to take Pyanfar and her shipmates to Mkks station and into a deadly confrontation between kif, hani, mahendo'sat, and human. And what began as a simple rescue attempt soon blossomed into a dangerous game of interstellar politics, where today's ally could become tomorrow's executioner, and where methane breathers became volatile wild cards playing for stakes no oxy breather could even begin to understand..."

Sound confusing? It is, even if you've read Chanur's Venture, the book that precedes this one. It is sometimes the case that the middle book of a trilogy is weak, and this book is very weak.
The action takes place over the course of a handful of days, and during the entire time the crew is exhausted. Midway through the book the reader is exhausted too. The dialogue is very often in broken English; this is done to indicate that the speaker doesn't fluently speakthe hearer's language (which isn't English anyway), but it grates on one's nerves after a while.
The story is very hard to follow. I had read the first book of the series and also The Pride of Chanur, which deals with some of the same characters but is not directly involved with the trilogy, and I still had lots of problems trying to figure out the politics. There's no preface or afterword that summarizes what has happened up to this point, so if you haven't read Chanur's Venture, this book will thoroughly confuse you.
There are other problems with the story too. There's a lot of posturing and verbal confrontation, but very little real action until the end. And some of the conflicts, between Hilfy and Pyanfar, for instance, repeat themselves a number of times and are never resolved.
I hate it when one of my favorite authors writes a dull book, but I can only give this book 2.0 stars (fair).