Runner

3.5 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Jak is a runner - a messenger carrying messages from planet to planet on the few rundown starships that still function. But when he's asked to take a boy - possibly the incarnation of a new spiritual leader - the job gets much more complicated and dangerous than he expected.

Review
I first ran across Dietz' books in a discount warehouse, and soon picked up several books – this series and one other. While he seems best known for the Legion of the Damned series, I haven't read that. This duology, though, is satisfying.

I say ‘satisfying', and I think that's a fair summation. This first book is perfectly solid, with some interesting worldbuilding and engaging characters. However, there's little real surprise to it, either in plot or character development. The story goes smoothly, skipping over minor credibility issues (such as the ease with which the group accretes new members), but most of the scene-to-scene progress is perfectly adequate.

I think that the problem for me was that, despite nice prose, the story appeared to be made up of pretty familiar elements. That, and the fact that the end – the goal toward which they've all been theoretically working – is given remarkably short shrift. It felt clear to me that Dietz' interest was in the journey, not the destination. I wish he'd spent another 25-50 pages on the ending so that it didn't feel quite as much of an epilogue tacked on to the adventure.

All that said, a satisfying quest story that won't require too much of you, but likely also won't stay with you in any detail for long.

The cover, by the way – a runner in a maze – has very little do with the story, other than metaphorically (and faintly).