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The Affinity Trap by Martin Sketchley check out website: www.simonsays.co.uk
Due to rising tensions with the Seriatt, a race of three-sexed aliens, the leader of Earth's dictatorship, General Myson, has attempted to forge an alliance with them. He does this by mating with the Seriatt Royal Household's child bearer, Lycern, in order to produce a child and seal the alliance. Unfortunately, once Myson returns to Earth, Lycern runs away to a rival planet. This is where our protagonist Alexander Delgado comes in. An old school Military Intelligence Officer who has fallen out of favour with the current regime, recovering Lycern is offered as his chance to come back into the fold.
From the outset, the mission does not go smoothly and quite soon Delgado ends up ignoring his mission briefing and having sex with the Seriatt. During sex, the female Seriatt secrete a highly individual, and highly addictive enzyme which has a quite severe destabilising effect on human males' mental, physical and emotional well being. All of which further complicates Delgado's mission. My first problem with this book: General Myson's plan is to seal an alliance with the Seriatt by having a child by one of them. THEY'RE ALIENS!! This is supposed to be a SCIENCE fiction book. Horses and donkeys can mate and produce offspring, but horses and dogs can't. Two species evolved under different suns certainly can't and this is supposed to be a 'natural' conception and birth!!! 2nd Problem: Sketchley mentions terms like 'Military Intelligence' a lot and the whole thing is supposedly set in a militaristic society but it doesn't feel like one at all. Writers like David Webber, David Drake, Eric Flint or Elizabeth Moon all do military SF really well, this book didn't pull it off at all. The hierarchy doesn't feel true and the fight scenes were just flat. 3rd Problem: There's a lot of stating of sudden dramatic changes in mental and emotional outlook, but nothing to really back those statements up. For example, Delgado suddenly becoming disaffected with his career. Except there wasn't anything up to that point to imply that he'd previously been as happy and contented in his career as the author is now saying he was. This kind of stating goes on all throughout the book. E.g. 'Delgado met Bucky's eyes. And in a moment of absolute clarity, he saw far beyond the young man's face. Messages passed and links formed between the two men instantaneously and immediate and mutual respect generated as they communicated in ways that transcended the conscious mind. If either had been asked to explain the sensation, neither would have been able to: it was the bond of kindred spirit, a meeting of like souls, the reunion of lost twins.' If that was it then, so what? But the entire book is made up of this kind of twaddle. Final Problem: It doesn't even end! 300 odd pages of that tosh and there isn't even a conclusion; it’s going to be a trilogy or series or something. I don't know. I don't care. I certainly won’t be reading them either way. Rachel Broome
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OTHER REVIEWS - May 2004
Non Fiction Mythology: The DC Comics Art Of Alex Ross Futures: 50 Years In Space The Challenge Of The Stars by David A. Hardy and Patrick Moore Lyra’s Oxford by Philip Pullman Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon: Second Edition by Brian Roseberry DVDs Babylon 5: The Complete First Season: Signs and Portents Fantasy Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson The Siege Of Mithila by Ashok K. Banker Broken Crescent by S. Andrew Swann The Magician’s Guild by Trudi Canavan The Destroyer Goddess by Laura Resnick The Weavers Of Saramyr by Chris Wooding The Iron Grail by Robert Holdstock Faerie Tales edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davies Darknesses by L.E. Modesitt, Jr. Slipstream Changing Of Faces by Tim Lebbon Karloff’s Circus by Steve Aylett The Well Of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde Science Fiction The Golden Globe by John Varley Market Forces by Richard Morgan It Came From Outer Space screenplay by Ray Bradbury A Gift Of Dragons by Anne McCaffrey Different Kinds Of Darkness by David Langford Felaheen The Third Arabesk by Jon Courtenay Grimwood Absolution Gap by Adrian Reynolds The Line Of Polity by Neal Asher The Affinity Trap by Martin Sketchley Natural History by Justina Robson Horror Living Dead In Dallas by Charlaine Harris Magazines
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This
story is set at the beginning of the 24th century, with the majority
of the Earth’s population living in giant habitat towers under a
military dictatorship. 
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