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4.0 out of 5 stars
Gyneth Gold, 27 Aug 2006
Fast paced action novel that's the third part of Gwyneths Bold as Love series. Great characterisation demonstrating an understanding of the human psyche as well as the continual character growth, the visual descriptiveness works extremely well and on the whole a cracking series to have on the shelves and one that will demand a reread something that very few manage to do.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
A Band of Gypsys I want to join, 30 Dec 2006
I have to take exception with "Trashman"'s review: Band of Gypsys is Gwyneth Jones at the top of her form, and the world she's created IS credible, and savage, and alarmingly believable. Not only has the United Kingdom dissolved; whole societal structures have disappeared, and in the background the Second Chamber plots and manipulates in a desperate attempt to get hold of the neurobomb.
The Triumverate remains the only hope, even as Ax's plans go horribly awry and the forces of evil prevail. This book is full of surprises and twists that go in ways the reader never expects - but looking back, you can see how skilfully the author has laid in the clues, and how all the insane logic makes sense in its own way, pointing to further horrors that could lie ahead. (Jones is particularly good at is stimulating the reader to think about the story and what's going to happen next.) That includes the Chinese invasion of England (why not?), the paralysis of the United States in its own convoluted political processes, and what's going on in Scotland and Wales.
It's also a deeply moving love story of Ax, Fiorinda and Sage, and the people they care for. The pressure on them all never lets up, and the urgency never lets go of the reader. And then there's the fact that Fiorinda may be pregnant...
It's a wonderful, atmospheric read, about people who really seem to exist. I'd recommend it to anyone - but if you're new to the series, start with Bold as Love and work through the whole terrifying, colourful world. If I have any complaint, it's that the books are too short; there's room for many more stories in the series.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
It could happen here, 19 Dec 2006
For the fourth episode of Bold As Love Ax Preston returns to England to take on the Green President job. It's a challenge.The Green Right "neo-feudalists" who never really lost control of the government have many of the millions who lost everything in the Great Crash rounded up in labour camps. More surplus consumers are effectively neo-serfs in domestic service, sold off to pay their debts. But the ruling junta conceals even uglier secrets, and they're after the vital parts they need to build a Neurobomb, the new weapon of mass destruction the USA accidentally launched, with devasting effect, in episode three.Cue for another hip, slightly skiffy, costly-yet-life-enhancing victory for the peace and love agenda, the formula as before. Be warned,that's not what happens. Everything really does go horribly wrong, after Ax tries to keep faith with a liberal US President who is on the way out, destroyed by his own hell-bent right wingers.The reader watches with nailbiting frustration as the heroes (and heroine) make terrible, doomed, sincere decisions that are absolutely in character, while faint bulletins from the global situation report the inexorable approach of the end.It's hard to guess where the story can go from here, but I'll have to find out, fearing the worst and hoping Jones is not too ruthless with the characters, because no one could put this series down unfinished. Bold as love gets tougher, and much more real this time, but still delivers gripping entertainment. Not so much a rock and roll fantasy, more a biting contemporary satire: anyone who finds the world events, or the state of England, in Band of Gypsys merely 'preposterous' is in deep denial, or has been sleepwalking through the twentyfirst century.
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