My reactions to reading this book in 1991. Spoilers follow.

I bought this book because I couldn't resist the title and cover blurb: "Glasnost was dead, and the cold war on Mars was heating up...". I hadn't read any Mick Farren before and didn't know what to expect. The book was competently done. Farren, particularly in his delightfully baroque spacesuits, is obviously trying to do a cyberpunk novel on Mars. He even borrows John Shirley's terminology of ice -- intrusive counter-electronics.). Farren knows his science, doesn't overplot, packs lots of plausible description that makes Mars seem like a plausible Old West, and paces well and uses lots of dialogue, some humorous.

But Farren is an essentially derivative writer. Besides Shirley, there is an explicit reference to Stephen King's The Tommyknockers (the malevolent influence of a buried spaceship is used here) and, I think, to King's Misery. The mind parasites mentioned in the last chapter are perhaps based on Colin Wilson's novel of the same name.

At first, I thought Farren's serial killer and his mental entity were merely a convential metaphor for psychosis but, since this is sf, Farren decided to literalize the metaphor. Unfortunately, Farren couldn't resist the evil-that-will-not-die ending.

I liked some of hte book's characters but most of the one's I liked died (I really didn't care if Lech Hammond, journalist, lived.). Farren creates tension in some places, particularly with his KGB. He seems to have a bit of anti-military bias, but it didn't interfere with the story. ( )