Eugen M. BaconCritiques

Some very interesting pieces and some not so interesting. My personal favourites in this anthology are Red_Bati, but Dilman Dia, which is an exciting and well-written story of an AI; and Paul Kinkaid's extract on Christopher Priest. Worth a read.½

A short story with a kind of adolescent joke ending. I can't say I was very impressed with it.

Julia Peters is an unemployed resident of present-day London. Her sister, Sandy, has suddenly joined the unemployed. Since they are the ones paying for their father’s care in a nursing home, income needs to be found, immediately.

After nearly being raped at what Julia thought was an end-of-the-day job interview, she is saved by Blake Anderson, who has an office in the same building. Blake is tall, square-jawed and handsome, while Julia is young and gorgeous. He offers her a job as his personal assistant for the next several months. It involves living elsewhere for that period of time, and doing lots of word processing. Julia doesn’t really have a choice, so she accepts. Then she finds out that they will be spending the next several months in Africa, specifically Tanzania, a place that Julia considers to be the middle of nowhere.

It helps when Blake pays Dad’s nursing home bill for the next several months. Julia gets a quick education on African life at the airport in Nairobi, where the two are to meet (her luggage is stolen). Blake takes her on a cost-is-no-object shopping spree to replace her things, before they continue to Tanzania.

The place where they are to live could be compared to a mansion. It is maintained by a local husband and wife, who live on the premises. Blake and Julia soon get to work. He is a best-selling romance author, and she is his typist.

Julia doesn’t know what to make of Blake. One day, he treats her like a queen, and the next day, he acts like a slave driver. Later, a woman named Karen stops by for a visit. One can almost see the claws and fangs growing between the two women. On his way to Mt. Kilimanjaro, where Karen owns a resort, Blake is carjacked and severely beaten. Julia rushes to his bedside. Blake later reveals that Karen is his overly protective step-sister. Julia also begins to realize that there is more to Africa than what meets the eye.

This book is quite good. It’s a romance story (as you may have guessed) set in a part of the world unknown to most Westerners. It is also a good tale of cultural discovery. It is a fast read, and is worth checking out.