Jaunting sounds like an Olympic Sport

The Stars My Destination is...wow. Just...wow. How he pulled off being a clown for a short time--I don't know. I really don't. They make him sound like one of those sorts of people that you KNOW could break your spine in half just by staring at you hard enough. Damn he's scary. He's like the physical embodiment of vengeance and fury. Lots of Deus ex Machina going on, but that's in any story these days. In most of the events that Gully should have died a horrible death, he finds a way out. I remember that escape from the Science Society or whatever, the hospital, the Commandos...he just gets really lucky. Not to mention that Burning Man flashbackwards thing.

I think my favorite character is the robot in the end...anyhow, on to a proper review:

This story was gripping at first, but after a while it became sort of painful to read. Gully, so I'll call him, starts off as an uneducated every-man of the time. There's nothing special about him {that we know of yet} except that he's got a strong will to survive despite his awareness of how often he dances with death. He ends up getting involved in a huge corporation/political blunder and suddenly he's being hunted by the very 'clan' he's hunting. Now, upon reading on the structure of 'the future' in this book and noting the date of its publication, it's quite ahead of its time. Surely the war and weapons of mass destruction were themes that were fueled by both the aftermath of the second World War and the beginnings of the Cold War. Still, upon having a system where these clans that rule the world are more like corporations {suggesting a takeover of Capitalism} and themes on teleportation, telepathy, and space colonization, it suggests the writer had a pretty vivid and well mulled over image in his mind of the twenty-fourth or twenty-somethingth century.

Anyways, the main character ends up becoming fueled solely on vengeance for having been left to drift by a passing ship. He doesn't even have education enough to want revenge taken against the people driving the ship; just the actual thoughtless steel shuttle itself, as if the ship and not the navigators decided to abandon him. Knowing this, or being lead by this, and his terrible diction, it's hard for me to believe that with less than a year of being educated in that underground hospital suddenly turned him into something formidable. It's not like he's fully refined, because he obviously has no charm or tact, but he can speak in complete sentences and he actually thinks a little before he goes and does something. Plus, his plans are not so horribly thrown together. He seems like he actually can come up with something if he's got the motivation. So I'm having trouble deciphering whether Gully's just dumb or lacked proper motivation before and is rather gifted. I take it he's the later due to his whole philosophical bout by the end of the story with a little help from that robot servant/Wall-E fellow.

I couldn't understand why he didn't develop any lasting infatuation with Jiz {I still can't think that name without laughing} and Robin. Those were two women he actually was working with. Apparently both weren't bad looking, though Jiz compared herself to an old woman he remarked that she was actually quite beautiful. No. Instead he falls for the chick whom he not only just met for a total of a few strong minutes, but he later finds was the one who sentenced him to death by drifting and is completely and utterly mad. I didn't get that. She didn't strike me as an attractive person. Even if you took the most beautiful body and slapped it on to that personality of hers, I wouldn't bite. She's so bland that I was left asking myself "what? what? REALLY GULLY?". He's obviously not the sort who's meant for romantics. He knows how to rape, so he probably gets some if he wants, but I'm afraid he doesn't even know what love is. No tact whatsoever when he blatantly admit to Robin that he was in love with Olivia, the Ice Queen from Blandsville. He should just stick to kicking butt in fast motion.

The story introduced a few cool concepts like jaunting and what it did to society, cool human enhancements, developments in society and culture, and all that fun stuff. That was actually what made up some of the more fun parts to read in my opinion. I loved the intro, how it began by describing the first trials of jaunting. I think they should have made the story about that guy. I'm sure it would have not been as epic, but it might have made more sense and it might have been just down to earth enough not to leave us bewildered by a plethora of new technology and ideas. Oh, but then we wouldn't get all the cool consequences that evolved from the masses learning of this teleportation technique. But hell, you could make the story about that as well. Gully's story...was over the top. I could understand how the events progressed, but some of his methods of escape were just...too coincidental. Like I said before, lots of Deus ex Machina. They explain the Burning Man appearances near the end of the story, and that's all fine and dandy, but the bombs just seem to always go off at just the most convenient times. I could make a long list of all the times Gully could have ended up dying and most of them I count off before the half-way point of the story. The point is, he didn't. He lived long enough to get to the moral of the story which actually doesn't seem to have all that much ado with the story itself. Don't get me wrong: 'Be an individual', 'don't be a robot', and 'a society is defined by the individuals' are great morals, but what the hell did it have to do with everything that just exploded in our face? Gully was an individual and look how many times he was nearly killed. He was a lucky bastard. And guess how many people he killed? He killed a lot of people. He's not a great example of an exemplary individual. He tries to atone by the end of the story but face it, so much happened to him that didn't seem to have nothing to do with those morals that you're not sure of yourself anymore.

It wasn't a bad story and it wasn't one of the best I've ever read. I love the setting, I love the ideas, and I love the society, but the characters and the story itself are not as well developed as I would have liked them all to be. None of the characters seemed to be very consistent and the main character was either scary as hell, stupid as hell, or confusing as hell. That's not a great character trope for your main guy unless it's a comedy you're reading instead of a serious sci-fi. I'd give it a 7/10.

-Peace out.