Helpful Score: 2
Cowboy Angels is a brilliant concept. The US discovers a means of travelling to alternate universes along with the atomic bomb. Once they are able to send agents through they find worlds where most Americas are under communist and fascist yokes, or were just victims of nuclear war. I mean, that is a grand concept. The folks to do this are Cowboy Angels - special CIA operatives that have one main requirement - that they be orphans and not know who their parents were. Why? Because the alternate universes the America of Cowboy Angels (or Real) are worlds where the change happened within the last 50 years, or worlds where no humans arose. Thus, the possibility of encountering (or worse looking for) a duplicate are good. And if you're an orphan with no known family, well, the chances go down. And these clusters of worlds are called sheaves. Thus you can have a Communist America sheave, a Fascist America sheave and wild sheaves.
The novel opens with Jimmy Carter being elected on a peace ticket and shutting down covert operations. This is bad because a not very covert operation is in play and it may not come off without assistance from the home line. Thus we meet Adam Stone and Tom Waverly, two Cowboy Angels that have come down on opposite sides. Tom to serve the government, Adam to continue the operation. From there it leaps into a hair raising combat as the Free America forces make a desparate attack on the opressors.
But it doesn't end there. It picks up many years later with Adam running a hunting guide business in a wild sheaf. He's approached by the company because his ex-partner Tom is killing doppelgangers of a specific woman - a mathematician and researcher. And the CIA wants Adam to bring Tom in and find out why he's doing it. After a bit of soul searching, he's off to a world that suffered a limited nuclear war (don't forget your dosimeter in New York) to see the scene with the latest victim.
Now, as I said, its a brilliant concept, and it works amazingly well for the first two thirds of the book. Sadly, it runs out of juice around there. There are some wonderful bits - like an explanation of why they only have access to the worlds they do, a time loop and a visit to our timeline. But it goes flat like a soda left out too long. Worse, a time travelling deus ex machina is introduced glanced at but never included.
McAuley is a great writer, but his stuff is uneven. I'd say the Confluence trilogy is his best work (it even touches on some of the same themes), but they're handled better there.
Likes: Amazing concept; interesting alternate Earths; good characters; interesting use of time travel; a conspiracy where the stakes are amazingly high; anecdotes from the Cowboy Angel operations; spies meet SF done fairly well.
Dislikes: Book looses steam two-thirds of the way through; time travelling deus ex machina; ending that felt limp with no real satisfaction or catharsis.
Overall, its a decent trade, mass-market paperback or library read. Its a decent introdcution to McAuley's thriller works and him as a writer. Suggested for lovers of SF and spy novels. This one is going up for trade.
The novel opens with Jimmy Carter being elected on a peace ticket and shutting down covert operations. This is bad because a not very covert operation is in play and it may not come off without assistance from the home line. Thus we meet Adam Stone and Tom Waverly, two Cowboy Angels that have come down on opposite sides. Tom to serve the government, Adam to continue the operation. From there it leaps into a hair raising combat as the Free America forces make a desparate attack on the opressors.
But it doesn't end there. It picks up many years later with Adam running a hunting guide business in a wild sheaf. He's approached by the company because his ex-partner Tom is killing doppelgangers of a specific woman - a mathematician and researcher. And the CIA wants Adam to bring Tom in and find out why he's doing it. After a bit of soul searching, he's off to a world that suffered a limited nuclear war (don't forget your dosimeter in New York) to see the scene with the latest victim.
Now, as I said, its a brilliant concept, and it works amazingly well for the first two thirds of the book. Sadly, it runs out of juice around there. There are some wonderful bits - like an explanation of why they only have access to the worlds they do, a time loop and a visit to our timeline. But it goes flat like a soda left out too long. Worse, a time travelling deus ex machina is introduced glanced at but never included.
McAuley is a great writer, but his stuff is uneven. I'd say the Confluence trilogy is his best work (it even touches on some of the same themes), but they're handled better there.
Likes: Amazing concept; interesting alternate Earths; good characters; interesting use of time travel; a conspiracy where the stakes are amazingly high; anecdotes from the Cowboy Angel operations; spies meet SF done fairly well.
Dislikes: Book looses steam two-thirds of the way through; time travelling deus ex machina; ending that felt limp with no real satisfaction or catharsis.
Overall, its a decent trade, mass-market paperback or library read. Its a decent introdcution to McAuley's thriller works and him as a writer. Suggested for lovers of SF and spy novels. This one is going up for trade.
