1975 science fiction, broadly in the same universe as Dreamsnake. In
the last city on a post-apocalyptic earth, Mischa the thief is trying
to get passage off-world for herself and her brother before their
telepathic talents doom them both.
This was McIntyre's first novel, and it shows; the influence of
Andre Norton in particular is very obvious at times. There's a great
deal going on here, with palace coups and space raiders and
post-apocalyptic mutants and drugs and synthetic twins and decadence
and telepathy and faginy; it has that first-novel feeling of having to
get everything down on the page in case the opportunity doesn't come
again.
As a result, the first chapters are fairly murky even to an
experienced SF reader, and there are so many things happening that
each of them individually doesn't get much time on the page. One
overall theme of how slavery works on the mind is well developed,
certainly, but we have N K Jemisin now.
The bad guys are bad because they drew a card with "Villain" printed
on it. The good guys are all Tortured. But everything could have done
with more development… and everything had got it, this might have been
a great fat book, the Dune of the seventies. As it is, it's a
sketchy outline and even then it gets wearing at times.
But it's really fascinating to see the early McIntyre, and I'm glad I
read it. I'm just unlikely to read it again.
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