I joked about not liking the first Lando book after discovering that L. Neal Smith was known as a libertarian science fiction writer. But that was a joke! I actually did like the first book! Not in the way I like a John Barth book, of course! I'm not a simpleton! I'm just an honest book reviewer who uses way too many exclamation points! But sticking with that honesty, I have to say this second Lando book was terrible. I used a period there to represent the gravitas I feel for having to report that a book I read and stuck with until the end wasn't worth reading nor sticking with to the end. It is a sadness which I will feel until the day I die (especially on the day I die because I'll be thinking of all the cool things I could have done instead of reading this book).
I can be absolutely sure that I wouldn't have enjoyed this book if I hadn't read that L. Neal Smith was a libertarian but I definitely wouldn't have found a number of passages as grating as I did knowing that he was. At the end of the last book, Lando Calrissian found himself a wealthy man. But when this book starts, he's practically a pauper because of taxes and government regulations and corrupt politicians. Sure, there's some hint that maybe he's not a great businessman. But there's an even larger winking suggestion that nobody can really be a great businessman with all of these gosh-darned government regulations and taxes! By gum, poor Lando couldn't even make it in business while starting out with a huge cash advantage. I guess the only thing he can do is go back to gambling because it's sort of illegal which means if he isn't caught, the government can't stop him from making a living at it! What a hero!
In the end though, we discover that the villain, Rokur Gepta (or whatever. I don't care enough to remember his actual name or, if I did get it right, care enough that I still remember it. Either way, I'll be haunted by it on my deathbed) was causing a lot of these financial problems for Lando. He was lowering market prices on fishing rods when Lando wanted to sell fishing rods. Or he was informing hangars that Lando was a smuggler so Lando would get hit with lots of petty surcharges. Or he was manipulating entire economies so that Lando would get the worst return on his investments.
In other words, Rokur Gepta is the most boring villain to ever be imagined by a libertarian science fiction writer. Lando was basically in a life and death struggle with a petty bureaucrat.
Luckily Lando's droid had once committed genocide on some backwater planet and the survivors of that genocide were hunting him down. I say luckily because that vendetta is the only reason there is any action at all in this book other than Lando cursing having to pay another docking fee for the Falcon.
In the end, Rokur disguises himself as an obese drug-addled bajillionaire (I use that word because the man is suspected to be the richest man in the galaxy. But he's dead now because Rokur killed him to pretend to be him so he could create a really elaborate ploy to get Lando into his grasp). He causes all sorts of chaos and murders dozens if not hundreds of people and ruins many of the lives of those left living, just to strap Lando onto a picnic table so he can get into Lando's head to try to make him cry. It works a little bit but Lando still gets away by sticking a chopstick in Rokur's eye. That leaves Rokur even more angry for a third book!
Look, I'm already going to regret so much wasted time when I find myself dying that I can't be too hard on myself that I'm going to read the last book of the trilogy. Maybe things will pick up!
P.S. You might be wondering why I gave this two stars instead of one. Well, I'm not sure I've read a one star book to the end yet! I mean, maybe Catcher in the Rye. But I'll have to reread that one to make sure!
I can be absolutely sure that I wouldn't have enjoyed this book if I hadn't read that L. Neal Smith was a libertarian but I definitely wouldn't have found a number of passages as grating as I did knowing that he was. At the end of the last book, Lando Calrissian found himself a wealthy man. But when this book starts, he's practically a pauper because of taxes and government regulations and corrupt politicians. Sure, there's some hint that maybe he's not a great businessman. But there's an even larger winking suggestion that nobody can really be a great businessman with all of these gosh-darned government regulations and taxes! By gum, poor Lando couldn't even make it in business while starting out with a huge cash advantage. I guess the only thing he can do is go back to gambling because it's sort of illegal which means if he isn't caught, the government can't stop him from making a living at it! What a hero!
In the end though, we discover that the villain, Rokur Gepta (or whatever. I don't care enough to remember his actual name or, if I did get it right, care enough that I still remember it. Either way, I'll be haunted by it on my deathbed) was causing a lot of these financial problems for Lando. He was lowering market prices on fishing rods when Lando wanted to sell fishing rods. Or he was informing hangars that Lando was a smuggler so Lando would get hit with lots of petty surcharges. Or he was manipulating entire economies so that Lando would get the worst return on his investments.
In other words, Rokur Gepta is the most boring villain to ever be imagined by a libertarian science fiction writer. Lando was basically in a life and death struggle with a petty bureaucrat.
Luckily Lando's droid had once committed genocide on some backwater planet and the survivors of that genocide were hunting him down. I say luckily because that vendetta is the only reason there is any action at all in this book other than Lando cursing having to pay another docking fee for the Falcon.
In the end, Rokur disguises himself as an obese drug-addled bajillionaire (I use that word because the man is suspected to be the richest man in the galaxy. But he's dead now because Rokur killed him to pretend to be him so he could create a really elaborate ploy to get Lando into his grasp). He causes all sorts of chaos and murders dozens if not hundreds of people and ruins many of the lives of those left living, just to strap Lando onto a picnic table so he can get into Lando's head to try to make him cry. It works a little bit but Lando still gets away by sticking a chopstick in Rokur's eye. That leaves Rokur even more angry for a third book!
Look, I'm already going to regret so much wasted time when I find myself dying that I can't be too hard on myself that I'm going to read the last book of the trilogy. Maybe things will pick up!
P.S. You might be wondering why I gave this two stars instead of one. Well, I'm not sure I've read a one star book to the end yet! I mean, maybe Catcher in the Rye. But I'll have to reread that one to make sure!
