Pitfall

Roger Zelazny's Alien Speedway #2

by Thomas Wylde

Deception at Pitfall:

Mike Murray traveled across the galaxy to reach Clypsis, where he hoped to get a chance to race faster-than-light ships. He found a place for himself among the dreamers and pilots of a thousand worlds.

But the competition is fierce. When a racing accident greatly injures his rival, Mike is accused of tampering with the ship. In the midst of preparing for an upcoming race, he must clear his name by unmasking the saboteur.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

198 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book takes awhile to get up to speed, and while it’ll never be a champion in my eyes, it was a fun ride.

Truthfully, this book suffers a lot in its lack of exposition character-wise. I’m not sure if this is because it’s book 2 (which was NOT mentioned on the front or back cover) or just the writer’s style, but there are so many names thrown in with no exposition that a lot of time I was like, who is this? What is their deal?

It also didn’t help that Michael, the main character, is so incredibly bland and uninteresting. I had trouble caring about him, and while the sabotage story was good, it took him so long to figure out there was sabotage and then the plot follows such a meandering vein there wasn’t a great deal of tension.

That being said, the actual racing parts were really fun and the sci-fi worldbuilding was really cool once I got a bead on it. There are lots of aliens (though a severe lack of description of them), which was fun, but most of the focus is on the technology, and that was so interesting and detailed that it kept me reading far more than Michael and his problems. One of the coolest things about it is that there are these fantastic pictures at the end outlining what the ships and other tech look like.

This is a short review because this is a rather short book. If you like racing and sci-fi, you’ll probably enjoy this. I did, but it wasn’t my favourite book of the year.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

What's worse than reading a SF novella from a beginning author who just isn't very good? Well, it's starting on such a book when you think it's from one of the best authors ever. This book was in my reading pile for a while (ok, for 12 years!) and all that time I thought it was actually written by Zelazny, perhaps a double novel with another story by someone named Wylde. Nope, turns out this is part 2 in a series that was outlined by Zelazny, but actually written by other people. It has a Zelazny foreword about developments in AI, very interesting (although somewhat dated now and doesn't seem very relevant to the actual book), but then the book itself is a bit of a jumble of badly written dialog. Zelazny often also start in the middle of the action, and can be a bit hard to understand initially, but this one is just, ehm, a waste of a good setting (a high tech SF setting, comparable to Iain Bank's culture novels I think, so not easy to pull off, but here the mark was missed so widely that I didn't get very far before deciding to drop it). Admittedly, I didn't read part 1, Clypsis, first because I don't have it. So if you are set on reading this start there, it seems to be available on Kindle.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable sequel. It improves some things (addition of new aliens, new tech, tension and a little bit of mystery) without letting the flaws (most characters are still too nice) get the better of it. It's a story of desperate times calling for desperate measures. Don't go in expecting a masterpiece and you might find a great palate cleanser.

[MBybee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the racing and the action, though it was definitely a product of its time. I think Wylde did a pretty solid job here.



For reasons I can't quite put my finger on, the writing feels very 70s. I was surprised to see 87.

[Ben Walter]

fun & not very good. complete candy book