FLOATING CITY
By Eric Lustbader

Pocket Books (1994)

Reviewed by Bob Thompson 6/27/1994

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Lustbader's newest addition to the Nicholas Linnear series is now or soon will be out. It is the immediate sequal to THE KAISHO which I reviewed for you about eight months ago.

If you haven't read the previous Nicholas Linnear books, don't start with this one- it does not stand alone very well. In fact, I am tempted to sit down sometime in the near future and read the entire series again just so I can maybe get a better understanding of who, what and why.

FLOATING CITY is typical Lustbader- a gripping, globe-trotting thriller that is very complicated. There are several subplots that eventually appear to be linked into the Big Plot. Lustbader has rounded up the usual suspects for this one, the only one conspicuous by his absence is his business partner Tanzan Nangi, who usually plays an important, if minor, part in the series.

We are introduced to a few interesting new players too. There is Rock an ex-American GI who decided to stay in Vietnam and become an arms dealer and drug kingpin. (he is definitely one of the bad guys) Then there is Vesper Arkham, a beauty with brains and big time connections. She may be one of the good guys, or one of the bad guys, but she is playing on several sides at once. U.S. Senator Dedalus, one of the most powerful men in Washington is involved, along with the Mafia, the Yakuza, an assortment of Japanese politicians, and a defecting Russian nuclear physicist.

Throughout the book, there is only one person that Nicholas can completely trust and that is his old buddy Lew Croaker, and Lew even has a complication of being in love with Margarite, a Mafia "princess" with more power than anyone suspects, including her Mafia "Don" husband.

Again, Lustbader has provided a wide variety of conspiracies, power plays and manipulations that parallel much of what is happening today, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of this fiction turn out to be real world fact in the near future.

A big component of Lustbader's novels has been oriental martial arts. The first few were more or less what you would see in a Chuck Norris or Steven Sagal movie, but for the last several books he has taken the martial arts stuff very heavily into metaphysics and mysticism, to a point that it definitely stretches credibility. Even though I am sort of a student of this kind of stuff, I think he goes too far with it for an otherwise semi-realistic action novel.

Even with my complaints, Lustbader remains in my top ten favorite authors, and if you want an exciting, interesting and well written story, give him a try- Just be sure to start at the beginning, and read the novels consecutively.
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