Buckner's new novel is set in the same post-environmental collapse world as her earlier Neurolink, this time among a group of aging executive-class extreme sports enthusiasts. They call themselves the Agonists, and their "extreme sport" is war surfing—taking fast, and thoroughly recorded, runs through the war zones of 23rd-century labor relations. Their leader is Nasir Deepra, two and a half centuries old, old enough that he lived through the collapse as an adult, and remembers an Earth whose surface was still habitable.

Nasir and his aging comrades are at the top of their sport, but they have a weakness they don't recognize yet: Nasir is infatuated with a beautiful physical therapist, Sheeba, who's in her twenties, and too well-adjusted to regard him as anything other than a father figure. Nasir, in his dogged pursuit of Sheeba, will do anything to please or impress her, including strong-arm his buddies into including her on their war surfs. This quickly goes—somewhat humorously—wrong, knocking the Agonists out of first place, and in fact down to fourth place, in the standings but, after some stressful moments melding Sheeba into the team while fatally weakening Nasir's ability to veto a surf he knows will be disastrous, a surf of the orbital factory called Heaven. Nasir is chairman of the board of the company that owns Heaven, and he knows what none of the others do—what the labor dispute is about, and why Provendia is so very determined to hide it. When Nasir's suit malfunctions on the surf, and Nasir and Sheeba find themselves stranded inside Heaven, with its unexpectedly young and naturally suspicious prote ("protected employees", the 23rd century's lower classes) population, Nasir, the protes, and even Sheeba—the most sensible of them all—are in for some shocking and dangerous re-education about how the world really works, and the reader gets an exciting ride.

There are some weaknesses here, and the ending is a bit heavy-handedly sentimental, but this is a fun book, and Nasir, with all his self-deceptions, is another believable, basically decent and likable character. ( )

see http://www.sfsite.com/04a/ws221.htm ( )

The premise: Nasir Deepra is a 248 year old execute whose one of the select few who rule 23 century Earth. He looks and acts nothing like an old man, and in order to make life actually INTERESTING after so many years, and he and friends "war surf," which means they sneak into a war zone, get involved in the scuffle and broadcast all of the footage on the net. But things change when Nasir becomes obsessed with a twenty-something year old woman named Sheeba. Just being around her makes him push all his limits and break all his rules, and soon he's going to break the biggest rule of all: to surf the orbiting satellite called Heaven, which is the most dangerous war surf of all, and where all of his secrets will be revealed if he isn't careful.

My Rating

Give It Away: which isn't an entirely fair rating, but I can't sit back and say it's worth the cash either. It's somewhere in the middle. I think it's because the story, in the end, is worth the time you put into the book: it's a fast read (sometimes the voice reminded me of Palahniuk, but that's sometimes, not often) and has some interesting ideas once you get to the meat of the plot, which is what's REALLY going on in the orbiting satellite of Heaven and how the narrator is involved. However, you've got your work cut out for you. Nasir's no picnic of a person, and he gets really annoying, really fast. Most of the characters do, but I find that's because the characters are all products of their world, rather than the "fault" of the author (though, I've not read anything else by the author, so maybe she DOES have characterization issues). This book also has a splash of Lolita which is evident in the voice and the narrator's obsession with Sheeba, but there's more to the book than that. It does take a while to get there though, so that's why a rating for this sucker really isn't clear-cut at all. I will, however, be more than happy to read more of Buckner's work, so that in and of itself should say something.

The full review, which includes vague spoilers and also has cover art commentary, may be found in my LJ. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome. :)

REVIEW: M.M. Buckner's WAR SURF

Happy Reading! :) ( )

In the future the world will be going to hell in a hand basket. Hell, it will be best described as a basket case. The biosphere will have been devastated, cultural collapse will have occured, and the clock will be ticking on outright human extinction. Know something though? There will still be people who don't have enough excitement in their lives.

That's the situation corporate executive Nasir Deepra is in. When he should be making like an Eloi he's still flirting with the Morlocks, via the ultimate thrill sport of making timed expeditions into danger zones with his best buddies, the "war surf" of the title.

The one problem is that Nasir had forgotten that the ultimate danger is sometimes to care, as between wanting to impress this bright young thing and offering a kindness to his jaded comrade looking for a final high, he allows himself to be manipulated into tackling the ultimate target; a space habitat gone bad. That is where the real adventure begins, and it puts Deepra into the position of paying the price that caring demands.

While I had been prepared to give this novel some benefit of the doubt due to the nature of its climax, when I bounced some ideas around with my reading group I decided that I had to mark this novel down as a failed exercise. One friend, who had been an avid rock climber, just couldn't believe that the main character was really a thrill junky. This is fine, except that it means that Buckner missed some fine oppertunities for irony.

On further thought there is also the problem that Nasir really does lack a foil, apart from possibly the younger self that he's lost touch with, which does mean you might wind up finding his company tiresome. I really expected the supposed love interest to be an agent out to set Nasir up for a fall, and when that didn't happen much of the suspense went out of the novel for me; sometimes a ditz is just a ditz. ( )