Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Salvador, by Lucius Shepard

When I search for the stories from The Secret History of Science Fiction, I come across many reviews in little blogs like mine--someone just decided to put their reviews in a blog instead of posting them on Amazon or Library Thing or some such.  I currently use Delicious for my bookmarks and this blog for reviews--might have to switch someday, the Delicious folks may not keep this going.  We shall see.

In any case, I, like many other small bloggers, have read Salvador by Lucius Shepard, and am going to write about it.  Shepard is known as an SF writer but he is quite literary, and this one is very much in the vein of heavy reflections on the Vietnam war.  Except that is in the past, and this is set in Central America, where it looked at one point like we might go to war.  So he only got the venue wrong.  Soldiers amped on stimulants scour the rain forests for Sandinistas, finding some but doing vast damage in the process.  Including to themselves.  But the experience centers on our protagonist Dantzler, and how he feels about it from inside.  It's pretty good, in an elegiac sort of way.  I almost like it, but say in the end, 2 stars.

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