Treacherous Moon

Agents of ISIS #2

by Stephen Goldin

Hundreds of thousands of people have visited the pleasure moon Vesa and simply vanished without a trace. Is this part of some vast galactic conspiracy? To find out, the Imperial Special Investigation Service dispatches its two best agents to look into the matter--and the shocking truth they reveal leads to a chain of discoveries that eventually threatens the stability of humanity's entire interstellar Empire.

206 pages, Paperback

First published March 2, 2010

About the author

Born in Philadelphia in 1947, Stephen Goldin has lived in California since 1960. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Astronomy from UCLA and worked as a civilian space scientist for the U.S. Navy for a few years after leaving college, but has made his living as a writer/editor most of his life.

His first wife was fellow author Kathleen Sky, with whom he co-wrote the first edition of the highly acclaimed nonfiction book The Business of Being a Writer . His current wife is fellow author Mary Mason. So far they have co-authored two books in the Rehumanization of Jade Darcy series.

He served the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as editor of the SFWA Bulletin and as the organization’s Western Regional Director.

He has lived with cats all his adult life. Artistically, he enjoys Broadway musicals and surrealist art. Philosophically, he is an atheist.

Learn more about him at his Web site. . Many of his books can be bought through his online bookstore, Parsina Press.

Reviews

[Richard Chesher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great Read, I loved it. Plenty of action, imaginative, clearly written, smart and talented hero and heroine, good solid scifi opera stuff. If you read the Family d'Alembert series back in the 70's you'll recognize this revision as the same story line. But you probably won't remember any of it when you get your eye-balls feeding you the story for a second helping. Just a brief word of warning, though, if you read Tsar Wars and Treacherous Moon you're going to be completely caught up in the story and - well - you'll just plain need to read the rest of the series. So when you launch yourself into this universe set some time aside for a wonderful space romp. Go ahead, buy it. I dare you :-)

[Kevin O'Brien · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second book in the series, and once again it pretty closely follows the original from the previous Family D'Alembert series (see my review of Tsar Wars for the details on that). Suffice it to say, this is a pleasant enough romp, but I didn't see any substantial changes over the original. I don't mind that exactly, but it gave me no reason for a higher rating. The first book managed to improve on the original in some respects, whereas this one simply filed off the serial numbers and changed the names. I read it on a plane and it was a perfectly good way to kill time, but not a lot of meat on these bones.