Starfishers: The Starfishers Trilogy: Volume Two - Softcover

Cook, Glen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1597801682 ISBN 13: 9781597801683

Publisher: Night Shade, 2010

Synopsis

Starfish: Treasure troves of power. They were creatures of fusion energy, ancient, huge, intelligent, drifting in herds on the edge of the galaxy, producing their ambergris, the substance precious to man and the man-like Sangaree alike. In deep, starless space the herds were protected by the great harvestships of the Seiners, or Starfishers - the independent, non-Confederation people who dared to skirt the deadly boundaries of Stars' End and battle the Sangaree. It is with them on the harvestship Danion that Confederation agents Mouse Storm and Moyshe BenRabi have to fly and fight, probing mystery and myth. And where BenRabi, man of many names, must surrender his dreams and his mind itself to the golden dragons of space and their shepherds, the gathering... Starfishers.

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About this title

About the Author

Glen Cook is the author of dozens of novels of fantasy and science fiction, including The Black Company series, The Garrett Files, and The Tyranny of the Night. Cook was born in 1944 in New York City. He attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop in 1970, where he met his wife, Carol.

Reviews

Cook's gloomy, operatic 1982 sequel to Shadowline continues the adventures of Moyshe benRabi, a morose refugee from the overcrowded, violent welfare slums of Old Earth. As he spies for the Confederation, benRabi must overlay his real personality with personas more suitable to the tasks at hand. Partnered with the vicious Mouse Storm, the small, brown, Oriental, Manchu-mustached scion of a fallen house of mercenaries, benRabi is dispatched to infiltrate the isolationist Seiners, a community of humans with a monopoly on the material that enables faster-than-light communications. BenRabi soon finds himself infatuated with Seiner society—and one Seiner in particular—and unexpectedly in contact with extraordinary alien beings. An apocalyptic battle sets the stage for the trilogy's conclusion, Stars' End, without which this volume is not really complete. (Apr.)
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Elaborate flashbacks provide a framework for the story and context for vicious betrayal by an old enemy that ensue after Mouse Storm and Moyshe BenRabi, sent to spy on the Seiners for the Confederation, are outed as spies fairly quickly. Suddenly, they're in the middle of something much bigger than they had expected when the Seiners are attacked by the implacable Sangaree and strange energy-sharks that feed on the great beasts of the vacuum called starfishers, which drift on the edge of known space and produce the ambergris that makes this world's space-travel technology possible. For Mouse and Moyshe, the situation is a tangled web of superstitions, legends, and facts too bizarre to be believed, building up into a big threat to the Confederation, with the Sangaree hovering, waiting for the moment to wreak vengeance. They are as delightful a pair of secret agents as one could hope for, engaged in a fascinating, layered adventure rife with riotously interesting space-opera elements and spectacular battles. --Jay Freeman

Edition details

• Publisher: Night Shade
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1597801682
• ISBN 13: 9781597801683
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248