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Windswept Review
Sep. 17th, 2015 07:53 pmHey,
So I finished up Windswept by Adam Rakunas (warning, the Amazon description is full of spoilers). It was a pretty good book.
On the planet Santee Anchorage, the local Union has carved out a small freehold against the Big Three corporations that dominate human space. The locals grow genetically-modified sugar cane and process the cane into various industrial products (including plastics and fuel). Padma Mehta is a Ward Chair and Union organizer. She needs to recruit new workers by encouraging corporate drones to ditch their indentured lives and come work for the Union. As the story opens, she's way behind on her headcount and she needs to make up the difference to secure a fat bonus and a chance to buy up one of the local distilleries.
She gets a line on a group of 40 employees looking to jump ship at Santee, but the deal goes bad and she only gets five (six if you count the corpse). Then her potential new hires get stolen from her. Then bodies start to turn up. Then the rum starts to go bad and she really has to get in gear.
So yeah, it's a good book. The dialog is pretty funny in a lot of places and the plot moves forward at a brisk pace. Even when the central mystery is more or less resoled, there's still a decent chunk of book left which is actually ok since some of the loose ends require vigorous tying off. My only minor nit is that Padma takes a brutal amount of punishment in a short span of time that would flatten just about everyone but that's kinda par for a lot of fiction.
Anyway, I was sold on the premise of a far-future labor organizer and the book really didn't disappoint. Nothing deep, but a fun read all the same.
later
Tom
So I finished up Windswept by Adam Rakunas (warning, the Amazon description is full of spoilers). It was a pretty good book.
On the planet Santee Anchorage, the local Union has carved out a small freehold against the Big Three corporations that dominate human space. The locals grow genetically-modified sugar cane and process the cane into various industrial products (including plastics and fuel). Padma Mehta is a Ward Chair and Union organizer. She needs to recruit new workers by encouraging corporate drones to ditch their indentured lives and come work for the Union. As the story opens, she's way behind on her headcount and she needs to make up the difference to secure a fat bonus and a chance to buy up one of the local distilleries.
She gets a line on a group of 40 employees looking to jump ship at Santee, but the deal goes bad and she only gets five (six if you count the corpse). Then her potential new hires get stolen from her. Then bodies start to turn up. Then the rum starts to go bad and she really has to get in gear.
So yeah, it's a good book. The dialog is pretty funny in a lot of places and the plot moves forward at a brisk pace. Even when the central mystery is more or less resoled, there's still a decent chunk of book left which is actually ok since some of the loose ends require vigorous tying off. My only minor nit is that Padma takes a brutal amount of punishment in a short span of time that would flatten just about everyone but that's kinda par for a lot of fiction.
Anyway, I was sold on the premise of a far-future labor organizer and the book really didn't disappoint. Nothing deep, but a fun read all the same.
later
Tom
