The Sea Peoples – S.M. Stirling

I’ve been reading the books of this series from the beginning, and this is the first that out-and-out disappointed. 80% of the book consists of a vision quest: John’s spirit is being held in an alternate semi-mad reality, and his friends spirits travel through a variant of our world to rescue him.

It’s hard to write a book-length vision quests that isn’t dishonest, because the author has too-few constraints. Nothing that happens will matter at the end of the vision, except that the participants may come away with a bit of self-knowledge. Or bad things can happen - but that depends upon the whim of the writer.

So this book is a 300-page yarn that will have no effect on the overall story, plus a few short guest appearances from the main story-line. That would be worth reading if the yarn worked as a well-enough-written stand-alone novel, but it does not.