Hunter's Run / George R.R. Martin et al

Hunter's Run

category: science fiction, author:

George R.R. Martin, Gardner Dozois, Daniel Abraham

original copyright 2007,
read in Sep 2011 (and before, in Feb 2009)

Agamedes' opinion: 7 out of 10

In its first 20 or so pages this book would normally have been ringing serious warning bells. Bad book, bad book, bad book. However, I also remembered that I had read this book before -- and enjoyed it. So what was... almost... so bad?

• The hero starts the book with no knowledge of who or where he is. Bad sign. The reader can expect to be confused. Even worse, the hero doesn't know how he got to his current position. Warning: confusing flashbacks dead ahead...
• The hero is Mexican. A "non middle-class white American" sometimes works... but is often just... because. In an author's note Dozois had read, "Where is the space hero who is Mexican?" and thought, "that was a fair question." So, although he "didn't know much about Mexican culture," he decided to make his hero a Mexican. This token Mexicanism should scare the sensitive reader...
• The hero has just killed someone in a knife fight. The reader is lead to wonder, Who will he kill next?
• Final danger sign: there are three authors. The first is George RR Martin. The same author who put his name to Busted Flush -- a comic book which forgot to include the explanatory pictures.

Despite all this... Hunter's Run is not too bad at all.

Sure, the introduction -- called an "Overture", for no good reason; there is no musical theme to the book -- the introduction is set a few solid steps into the plot. We then flash back... and forward... and back... and... Anyway, the introduction is just a standard ploy to get the reader started at an exciting part of the book. It's a good way to catch the attention of a short-attention-span reader.

Plenty of people complain that Lord of the Rings starts rather slowly. Boringly, even. According to the Hunter's Run formula, LotR would have started with Hobbits in the Barrow, imagining that they were ancient warriors in a battle against an evil king...

After a while, though, Hunter's Run does get going. The timeline jumps around but the authors keep it clear just when the action is taking place.

But why is the hero Mexican? According to the author's note, Why not?! Despite this unpromising explanation, the Mexican stereotype works quite well.

There are Spanish(?) words thrown in, to give that "authentic" flavour. Is it a way to get swearing past the censor? Even with the ease of Google Translate I was not interested enough to check. So there are blank spots in my reading. The plot still unfolds quite satisfactorily.

My main fear is, that the author will present a glamourised view of the selected ethnic stereotype... Read McCaffrey books for simple examples; some authors are quite embarrassing. I also suspect that many implied characteristics go right over my head... I grew up in Australia, completely failing to identify specific characteristics with each racial type. (Except that Italians ate garlic. So did the French. So did we, eventually...) But I missed the imprinting which -- it seems -- adds depth and understanding to, for example, many American tv shows.

On the other hand, I recognise the Mexican -- or more accurately Spanish -- stereotype of cocky, fighting, knife-wielding. I picked up that one from Asterix in Spain. And the stereotype does suit the hero of Hunter's Run. So, for me, the hero-as-Mexican does work.

So does the knife fight.

In fact, the knife fight is a clear part of the plot. And it is a strong part of the development of the hero's character.

Which leaves only one warning bell: three authors, of whom one is Martin.

As it turns out, this is not as bad as it seems. Where Busted Flush has several authors writing independent stories, Hunter's Run is a coherent single-thread story. The authors took turns -- over many years -- building the story. And it works!

I have rated this book as a seven -- but it is almost an eight. It began -- according to the authors -- as an idea which grew into a story. Then a novella. Not a good market for the novella, so it was extended to a full novel. It seems to me that the story lacks weight as a novel... It has a novella-sized plot with novella-sized characters.

Still. The market rules.

It's a good story. Read it and enjoy it.

..o0o..

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