pretty good standalone in an interesting universe. Looks at cultures based on the different sins (to outsiders anyway) through the eyes of a recently freed soldier/slave who has only known his own. Enjoyed, may read more, but a little contrived in places.

Conn grows up as a gladiator. He's owned by the gambling house in which he was raised as an orphan. And he's one of the best with decades of experience behind him, his record stands at over a hundred wins and only two draws, no losses. Nearly all pof the fights have been virtual of course, but for those who are prepared to bet enough, he's prepared to put his body on the line and knows no other way of living. He's been told that the secret to winning any gladiatorial combat is never give in to anger, always be in control precise and fast. He manages to achieve this far better than any of his contemporaries. Everything changes when his gambling house is destroyed in his absence. Through the beneficiary of a long time acquaintance he ends up owning his own contract - in essence free. Rather than continue to live in the mercurial world he decides to explore the vararity of worlds the populate this arm of the galaxy including Old Earth. In order to do so he comes to an arrangement with a more widely traveled girl who advises him on the various cultures he meets, most of which are very alien to his own viewpoint. It takes him quite a while to accept this.

Although not as stilted as it could be some of the cultures do seem a little forced in places, and there's not enough exploration of the variety in which 10000 worlds can achieve. A rather naive attempt pigeon holes them into (or responding against) one of the seven sins and this didn't really work very well as a theme. Stereotypes are always wrong, and there was little attempt to acknowledge the breadth of personality that can lie within a such broad spectrums.

However it was fun, and fast moving, the characterisation worked quite well, with plenty of interplay between the various minor characters, and a decent suspense plot -Conn struggles to learn about his parentage - wrapped through it all to give motivation beyond just explore what I've created. ( )

Matthew Hughes is one of Canada's ten best SF writers, and if you are not already familiar with his work, you should really make a point of picking up one of his books to see if his brand of droll Edwardian dialog and Jack Vance world building is not exactly what you've been missing.

An excellent place to start would be his latest novel, Template. Set in the Archonate universe, Template is nevertheless a self-contained mystery that has no overlap in characters and requires no previous familiarity with the series. The story concerns the adventures of one Conn Labro, a professional duelist who has nevertheless lived a very sheltered life within the confines of one of the great sporting houses of his home world, Thrais. When a favorite client is found murdered and Labro's home destroyed, he sets out to solve the crimes and the deepening mystery of his unexpected inheritance.

Once off Thrais, however, he discovers that he is hopelessly out of his depth when he tries to interpret the actions of others through the narrow lens of his own culture. Constantly bumping into the differing mores of other worlds, he is forced to rely on the services of his Good Samaritan guide, Jenore Mordene. Jenore, and the others they encounter enroute to old Earth, slowly break through Labro's preconceptions and allow him to see that events and relationships are open to more than one interpretation.

One particularly nice touch here is how Hughes characterizes Labro's growth through changes in dialog. Labro's initially rigid mindset manifests in an almost autistic speech pattern, but as Labro's worldview expands, there is a corresponding increase in the fluidity of his conversation. (Although this makes for somewhat less of the sardonic dialog that is the trademark of Hughes' Archonate series, it is oddly satisfying to realize that not everyone in his universe talks that way; just the erudite characters who happen to be the protagonists in those other books.)

But Labro not only broadens his own horizons; Jenore similarly realizes that she can't go home again, as her travels across "the spray" ˜ the myriad worlds of human occupied space ˜ have led her to grow beyond the confines of her own cultural upbringing. Hughes also weaves in some subtle discussion on the nature/nurture debate, an implicit rejection of cultural relativism through Jenore's character, and a rather droll paradigm for the study of culture templates, all of which makes for a more thoughtful book than might at first might appear to be the case. In spite of Hughes' often leisurely pacing, this is still primarily a page-turning mystery, with all the vile villains, distressed damsels, dark secrets, and duels to the death anyone could wish for, so it would be easy to miss just how deeply philosophical Hughes novels truly are.

I should also note that Template is only one of two SF novels in which I have ever enjoyed the depiction of an SF sport. (The other was, not surprisingly for Hughes fans, the rousing game of Hussade in Jack Vance's Trullion: Alastor 2262.) Hughes description of birl, a sort of cross between log rolling and lacrosse, makes me want to set up a league and give it a try. (And talk about Canadian content! If only he'd been able to work in ice skates!)

So, as with all of Hughes' work, Template is highly recommended (and should be required reading for students of anthropology). ( )

Overall a solid and fun story that plays with libertarian concepts but has some pretty serious problems with the writing. If it were a cheap mass-market paperback I’d say go grab a copy. But PS Publishing’s edition will cost $40. You gotta be a fan or collector of Matthew Hughes to pay that much.

(Full review at my blog) ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1034017.html

In style, it is a conscious homage to Jack Vance, whose Tales of the Dying Earth I enjoyed a couple of years ago. There are three notable differences. First, Hughes' hero, Conn Labro, is a naïf rather than a man of smug sophistication like Cugel: he comes from a planet where all transactions are based on economics, so that (as another character describes him) he knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The novel therefore becomes a quest on several levels as he explores the universe, discovers the truth about his origins and gets the girl and his inheritance. Second (though this may just me my lack of appreciation), it is much less funny. The worlds and cultures that Conn Labro encounters on his journey to enlightenment tend to be monolithically organised around a single principle, but the effect (for me anyway) was sinister rather than humorous, and presumably intended to be so.

Those two differences with Vance are matters of authorial choice, and I think Hughes deliberately takes his story in a direction Vance didn't go, and on the whole navigates well. The third difference I noted, unfortunately, is not to Hughes' credit. The women of Hughes' universe are much less visible than the men: there is the central character's love interest, a slightly comical police detective, and another character who stands and watches her brother gambling (why does she not gamble herself?) and is then horribly murdered. Vance's women are much more interesting, and on occasion get the better of his hero. If Hughes' hero doesn't always win the argument, he makes up for it by saving his lover's life.

One other small point I regretted in Hughes book - a road not taken, perhaps - is that there is a hint in an early chapter that the somewhat two-dimensional cultures described are each intended to represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins. This is a neat idea, and would have brought an interesting extra set of structures to mesh with what is a fairly standard hero's quest narrative; but Hughes doesn't quite do it. Still, I enjoyed the grand narrative sweep and general sensawunda. Good fun. ( )