Book #48 - Ragamuffin

I ran across Tobias Buckell online and read his blog. We corresponded a bit and I was impressed with his thoughtfulness.

So I bought two of his books, one of which was Ragamuffin. It’s a science fiction book, far in the future, but with a mix of space adventure and historical repetition. The book opens in an exciting manner, a bionic-like woman that is on the run after assassinating some member of an alien race, on some alien planet where humans are kept like pets. She manages to escape out into space, but is pursued. She is trying to get to the rebellion of humans at one of the galaxy.

The book then jumps context, going to the captain of the freighter where our assassin is trying to find passage. It jumps back again, and I’m not clear if we have another set of humans with different alliances, or some other species. In any case we have people that have their mind wiped by the aliens that rule this section of the galaxy.

About halfway through, the book goes through another transformation as we jump to a planet where humans are semi-technical, but also live in an Aztec or Mayan like civilization. Priest and human sacrifice are there, but we find two enhanced humans, like our assassin, that have lived for hundreds of years there. Apparently this planet is cut off from the rest of the galaxy by a closed wormhole.

A lot happens in the book, and I’m amazed by how well Tobias pulls the different clashes of this world together. This is his second book and I would like to go back and read the first one, to better understand the framework of this time. I did find it hard to follow at times what was happening with so many different groups, species, cultures, it was confusing. Still, as I muddled through I found myself really enjoying this book.