Miles Franco is a Tunneler, someone who has the ability to open Tunnels between Earth and an alternate plane of reality called Heaven. Granted, he's only able to use this ability around the city of Bluegate, and he could make a better paycheck working for one of the many gangs, but he values his independence and perhaps more importantly his skin. However, Miles gets caught transporting a family of illegal Vei immigrants from Heaven to Earth and the cops are threatening to put him in prison, a fate worse than death for a Tunneler like Miles. However, they're offering him a way out: a deadly new drug called Chroma is about to hit the streets of Bluegate. If Miles helps the cops keep Chroma off the streets, they'll let him walk. Provided he lives long enough for it to matter. Definitely not one of his better days.
Now, I have to admit that I did end up liking the book, however this does not mean I did not have a few problems with it. First, there is a pretty big plot twist, but it happens about halfway through the book so you kind of see it coming. Not that I minded the book going on beyond that point, the plot just seemed too nicely tied up for the book to be over. There were also a lot of descriptions of long-legged beautiful women in the book, which since I'm puritanical I was saying to myself, "Okay Miles, I get it, you like women. Now move, we got crime to fight! *pokes with stick*" Granted, since the whole book is kind of in that noir detective style, descriptions of beautiful women is par for the course. The only other problem I had was Miles seemed to get beat up a lot and go without sleep a lot to do the things he does in the book. I mean, even a Space Marine might have trouble going through what he did. But really that's just a minor point and my opinion.
Overall I feel like the plot takes a little while to kick into gear, but once it does it takes off at breakneck speed, which I felt was appropriate because they only had so much time to stop Chroma from getting to Bluegate. I also found the world that Strange built to be really interesting. Eighteen cities on Earth have a Bore, a large, permanent tunnel which connects Earth to Heaven. Certain people born around the Bores can create smaller, temporary tunnels between the two worlds and can also make Pin Holes that let them influence reality, but only around their home Bore. Many of these Tunnelers make a living moving goods and people both legal and illegal between Heaven and Earth. I also found the desperation, dilapidation and spread of organized crime throughout Bluegate to be believable.
The ending of the book was pretty open-ended and a note from Strange at the back said that another book is coming in 2012, so I look forward to more adventures of Miles Franco and more exploration of the world Strange has created. I highly recommend all my readers get a copy of The Man Who Crossed Worlds and check out a free short story called The Man Who Couldn't Be Bought.
- Kalpar
No comments:
Post a Comment