This book was written 1976 and is steeped in hippie ideology's. (Smoking pot to achieve a state of Zen and the ever famous, 'peace and love will conquer all.') The idea the book is based around intrigued me and is relevant to the problems we face in the world today; terrorism. The problem with the book is that the old hippie ideas don't hold water in the real world.

(ALL VIOLENCE)(CAN BE AVOIDED BY THE TRULY SERENE MIND)
This is straight from the book. Sometimes I felt the author was forcing his views on me as I read.(Not that I disagree with all his views.) I just don't like to be force-fed political view points while reading sci-fi.

The writing style at time's annoyed me. The author had tendencies of introducing characters from nowhere then giving the ever famous (Info dump) to explain who they were. Why not work the characters into the story? What was the rush? The book is short as it is.

What could have been a very good story fell short of the mark. I read the reviews posted before mine and I couldn't disagree more with the high ratings. I'm hard pressed to give this book a 3 star rating, but I will. I like Spiders 'Callahan' stories but I had a very hard time digesting this book.

I know many praise Spider and look upon him as the next Robert Heinlein, and these followers will have a hard time with my review. I just want to say, "I tried to like the book. I really did." I just don't feel it's worthy of a 5 star rating. I gave it 3 stars, but It felt like 2.5.

Sci-fi readers.

The hippie over tones.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of Telempath   from Amazon.Com!

Created Dec 29, 2005 at 5:35am • Submit your own review...