Children No More by Mark L. Van Name

They say to be careful what you ask for. I'd hoped in my last review that Jon & Lobo would someday take a job they walked into with eyes wide open, not having to be tricked into it. Got it in Children No More. Jon is hired by an old mercenary buddy, Lim, to rescue a group of child soldiers from the rebels controlling them on the planet Tumani. The only wrinkle at the beginning is that Maggie, from an earlier book, is part of a group funding the rescue, because one of the children is a descendent of PinklePonker.

The original operation goes smoothly, and Lim's people begin to try to re-educate the boys, who have been addicted to drugs by their captors, and have been brutalized to make them vicious fighters. As we might expect from Jon's history, the double-cross comes shortly thereafter when the local politicians renege on their promise to let the child soldiers be helped and adopted by families, finding a political use for them, instead. When you get swindled, how else do you get your revenge except by swindling right back? Jon calls his buddy, Jack, and things go a little twisty.

This book is filled with flashbacks to Jon's childhood, and we really learn a whole lot more about his history. We get to know his old friend, Benny, who trained Jon to fight after he was dumped on a planet for undesirables, and who was also part of the nanomachine expirement. This back story really fleshes out Jon's motivations for helping Lim far beyond his original contract. Nothing terribly complex or thought provoking, unless you use this book as a jumping off point for learning more about the cause of rescuing child soldiers. Van Name mentions in his afterword that there are around 300,000 children being exploited as soldiers worldwide today.

Overthrowing Heaven by Mark L. Van Name

I think the third book in this series is probably the weakest so far, unfortunately. It moves along very slowly, with a ton of setup and very little action until the end. The only thing that redeems this book at all is that we get a little more insight into Lobo's history, at last. It's still a bit of light amusement to while away the lonely hours, but that's about all.

There's a monster in Heaven. Jon and Lobo are recruited to kidnap a scientist who is performing nanotech experiments on abducted children, under the cover of creating fantastic animals out of history, myth and legend for a vast amusement park, Wonder Island, that seems to be like a combination Disney World and Jurassic Park.

There are some good lines here and there, mostly spoken by Lobo, such as,
"Lovely, aerial bodyguard duty. First I get to shop, and now I get to hover in case you overeat and need immediate relief for indigestion. I feel so fulfilled."

I liked this bit of commentary, too,
"What passed for news on Vonsoir was, as is typical of most worlds, a hash of local gossip, government-created flavorless gravy for the intellectually toothless, and the occasional drop of spice..."

One thing that I find slightly annoying about the series thus far is that Jon never seems to just be able to take on a straight job, rather than getting tricked into some mission he hadn't anticipated. Why can't some of his adventures be purposive, rather than being blown willy nilly by the winds of fate into these messes? He always seems to be just relaxing, doing nothing in particular, between jobs, when someone cons or tricks him into doing more than he intended.

Another thing that I'm not thrilled with is that Jon seldom seems to use his nanomachines to do anything worthwhile. He used them to disarm some incompentent thugs in the first book, but since then we haven't really seen any new capabilities from his nanos, and that's the sort of thing I'd like to see developed a little bit in each iteration. Van Name seems to use the excuse of "if I use them, someone might figure out what I am" over and over again, but there are surely ways to use them undetectably, right?

The third thing has to do with Jon's inability to actually have a normal human relationship. He's absolutely unable to ever trust anyone, make friends, be a lover. There was an interesting little triangle that began to develop between Jon and the two female characters in this novel, and between what appears to be his cluelessness (how can anyone who's 155 years old still be that clueless?), and his trust issues, it contributed nothing new to the plot, just tiresome filler material.

I've still got the next book in the series on hold at the local library, so I'll continue to read, but this one was a bit disappointing.

Slanted Jack by Mark L. Van Name

Slanted Jack is the second in the Jon & Lobo series, and picks up slightly after the first episode, One Jump Ahead. Jon is enjoying a leisurely gourmet meal in a spectacular setting on the planet of Mund, when he is joined by an old "friend", Slanted Jack. Jack and Jon used to work con games together, and Jack got his nickname because he was never able to do anything straight.

Jack has a sad story and a proposition for Jon. He's acquired a young ward, Manu, who is reputed to be a native of Pinkelponker, the blockaded world (where Jon was born) that was reputed to be the home of people with special abilities, especially psychic. Manu is a seer, and he suffers from a rare disease that requires expensive treatments, Jack relates. In order to get the money for these treatments, Jack wants to allow Dougat, the leader of a widespread cult that worships all things having to do with Pinkelponker, to interview Manu, a privelege that he is willing to pay dearly for.

Jack doesn't trust Dougat, however, to deal squarely with him, and he hopes to hire Jon to provide backup muscle in case things go wrong. Jon is tempted by the idea of helping the boy, and agrees to help Jack, even though he knows there's a scam in the works, somewhere.

Along the way to meet with Dougat, Jon is accosted by some thugs in the hire of Chaplat, a local gangster to whom Jack owes money, and after a tense meeting with Chaplat, agrees to "find" and bring Jack to him to pay his debts. The meeting itself goes horribly wrong, and Jack, Jon and Manu flee the scene. Along the way out of that mess, Jon has a meeting with a local EC (quasi -government/military force) commander who also has some interest in the situation, and convinces her that he can get Jack, Manu, as well as Chaplat and Dougat, into her clutches.

So Jon is triple-dealing, at least, and things get wild and wacky before all his scams play out. Another good read in the series, looking forward to the next.

One Jump Ahead by Mark L. Van Name

One Jump Ahead appears to be the first book in a series about Jon & Lobo, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading the next two or three that my library stocks. This has got that out of the frying pan and into the black hole quality that I really enjoy for quick mindless entertainment. The hero, Jon, is an engineered human being, with nanomachines living within his body which he is able to communicate with, and have them do things for him by creating swarms of nano-bots outside of his body.

The planet where he was created, Aggro, has been blockaded by the interstellar authorities, and everyone believes that all of the experimental humans like him have been destroyed. I think there's probably a back story here that Van Name may have published in short story form, and I may have to do some research in that area.

Jon uses his nanomachines to help him rescue the kidnapped daughter of a corporate executive by having them create swarms and "eat" all the weapons that the abductors are holding. Ok, there's a bit of the willing suspension of disbelief required to think that a bunch of nano-sized organisms could consume that volume of metal nearly instantanteously, but once you get that out of the way, everything else that follows is logical.

As part of his reward for thwarting the kidnappers, Jon gets title to a decommissioned military space craft, called Lobo (is this some sort of backhanded tribute to Laumer's Bolo series?). Lobo is run by an AI who is just a little cranky and quirky and makes plenty of sarcastic comments, but who, after Jon has him refurbished, can deal out the death and destruction quite handily.

Rescuing the girl, getting Lobo, and getting off planet are about the last things that go smoothly for Jon, and he muddles from one mishap to the next for the rest of the book. Some fun action, decent dialog, and a semi-twisty plot make this one worth a read.