I received a copy of this book, thanks to goodread's first read! Best I can tell, this is a truly rare gem- a book that started as a movie, instead of the other way round. And I think that is part of this book's problem. Don't get me wrong, it was an interesting read, and a really unique concept. The first half of the book is really great, fabulous writing, interesting characters and character development. I don't have much experience with westerns, but I still found this one to be a page turner, I literally couldn't put it down.

But once the action got good, the writing began to fall apart. There wasn't a lot of description about the aliens, or their craft. So little in fact that I could never get any picture in my head of what they looked like. And several action scenes were hard to follow for the same reason. My guess is that the writing suffers because this story is not Joan Vinge's creation, but she has been tasked with taking a preexisting screen play and turning it into a novel. But all in all, an interesting read.