Neal Asher’s Review of Death’s Head

Posted on June 29th, 2007

NON-FREE

Why are we pushing someone else’s review of a book? Two reasons: 1) we haven’t read it, and 2) the review is pretty amusing. Amazon.com comments place the novel as an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek space opera with a sense of humor, although some disagree whether the humor is sly or blatant. All agree that it has shoot-em-up in spades. Maybe that will put the following quote from Asher’s review in context:

David Gunn’s Death’s Head started off loaded with violent action and horror and continued in that vein, so I was hooked from about page two, then hooked landed gutted and fried in batter as soon as the talking gun put in an appearance. Yeah! Fuck the literarty-farty crap in the SFF world that has the self-proclaimed arbiters of taste creaming their panties. Take those oh-so-worthy tomes and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine. This took me right back to the fun I had reading E. C. Tubb’s Dumarest saga, Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter on Mars or the old Robert E Howard Conan books!

Here’s the rest of the review wherein Asher rails against more of the high falutin’ types in the SFF world.

The review is amusing in it’s counter-PC ranting, but there’s no doubt that there are issues in science fiction and fantasy with credible representations of women and minorities. Further, the SFF community certainly doesn’t need to discourage good writing, and some of the best writing has been chock full of insightful political or social commentary (including some of the best shooters). After all, no matter the setting, SFF usually comes back to the people involved and their interactions with others.

On the other hand, sometimes all a reader wants is a story where somebody’s shooting a bunch of shit up. And that’s okay, which I think may be the point Asher is making.

Tags: Review
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