Quicksilver

Rating:
Summary: Publishers Weekly Review
Review: We're happy to report that Quicksilver was reviewed in the April 26 edition of Publishers Weekly. They called the book, "... [a] warp-speed technothriller with the most engaging underdog protagonists since Jurassic Park. ... the hair-trigger plot and heroics are gripping, and the mix of formidable but feminine heroines and reluctant heroes adds a new twist to the scenario. This follow-up to the Reeves-Stevenses' bestselling Icefire insures their entrée to the technothriller elite."

Rating:
Summary: Girls, guts and glory - oh, please
Review: You will love this book if:

--You love technothrillers but believe that the US military is run by warhappy Dr. Strangeloves;

--That the only heroes in the US military - the only ones who see clearly, do the right thing and defeat the bad guys - are women who Fight Their Way Up Despite All Those Sexist Guys Who Leer At Them;

--That it's wrong to make sexist remarks about women, but don't mind repeated sexist remarks about men;

--That the only sympathetic men are wimpy, Gandhiesque pacifists - "I won't carry a gun!" - while happily employed working on far-beyond-top-secret communications and weapons system;

--That men are fascists when they kick ass, but women are cool when they do the same thing;

--That a second-year female naval cadet who's taken a couple of tactics and hand-to-hand combat courses can turn, when Payback Time comes, into a distaff Rambo doing everything but carving notches in her gun for each bad guy she wastes in her efforts to get even;

--That unbelievably depraved bad guys who kill more than a thousand people in closely related terrorist incidents, while being shown early as neo-Nazis, can somehow be excused as pan-European idealists credibly worried about American hegemony and war-mongering. The message lingers there at the end that you, too, should be more worried about this than the thousand of your fictional countrymen killed in this novel. This might play in Berkeley, but after Sept. 11, I wouldn't try to sell this in lower Manhattan.

It's too bad, because the Clancyesque technical guts of the book - from a nasty new Star Wars weapon based on electro-magnetic pulses, to the fine details of security at the Pentagon and how it might be defeated - are worthy. And the ending, while hokey, isn't terribly more so than Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon."

But you get the feeling that the Reeves-Stevens writing team took turns writing passages, with Reeves-Stevens Him writing technical details interspersed with the tedious "you-go-girl" narratives written by Reeves-Stevens Her.

Rating:
Summary: Girls, guts and glory - oh, please
Review: You will love this book if:

--You love technothrillers but believe that the US military is run by warhappy Dr. Strangeloves;

--That the only heroes in the US military - the only ones who see clearly, do the right thing and defeat the bad guys - are women who Fight Their Way Up Despite All Those Sexist Guys Who Leer At Them;

--That it's wrong to make sexist remarks about women, but don't mind repeated sexist remarks about men;

--That the only sympathetic men are wimpy, Gandhiesque pacifists - "I won't carry a gun!" - while happily employed working on far-beyond-top-secret communications and weapons system;

--That men are fascists when they kick ass, but women are cool when they do the same thing;

--That a second-year female naval cadet who's taken a couple of tactics and hand-to-hand combat courses can turn, when Payback Time comes, into a distaff Rambo doing everything but carving notches in her gun for each bad guy she wastes in her efforts to get even;

--That unbelievably depraved bad guys who kill more than a thousand people in closely related terrorist incidents, while being shown early as neo-Nazis, can somehow be excused as pan-European idealists credibly worried about American hegemony and war-mongering. The message lingers there at the end that you, too, should be more worried about this than the thousand of your fictional countrymen killed in this novel. This might play in Berkeley, but after Sept. 11, I wouldn't try to sell this in lower Manhattan.

It's too bad, because the Clancyesque technical guts of the book - from a nasty new Star Wars weapon based on electro-magnetic pulses, to the fine details of security at the Pentagon and how it might be defeated - are worthy. And the ending, while hokey, isn't terribly more so than Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon."

But you get the feeling that the Reeves-Stevens writing team took turns writing passages, with Reeves-Stevens Him writing technical details interspersed with the tedious "you-go-girl" narratives written by Reeves-Stevens Her.