Blood Lines

In the last book in this series, we are introduced to Kieth Ramsey who is a burned out journalist/writer. His experiences then give rise to this book.Ball is Ramsey's kinda friend and a cyborg of the first water. Ball is also a secret agent for the Dominion. His reasons for doing things are so obscure that he has lost track of what the goal was in the first place and so have his urstwhile employers. The number of ups and downs and ins and outs in this book are excessive. Nothing is as it seems. I finally decided that a journalist thrown into the politicts of the Congo would write the same type of book.Make no mistake, this is an interesting book. Its only flaw is that the worldweary tone grates on you are a while. The author's belief that a major corporation would stake everything on one roll of the dice: if the corporation wins it will have total power or loses and is totally destroyed is a shakey premise.

Keith Ramsey, a famous reporter for Associated News, is on the planet Ptolemy for the annual renga poetry competition. But poetry, like all endeavors on Ptolemy is taken seriously, it's not uncommon for losers to opt for death if their entries were considered unsatisfactory. And than there is the presence on planet of 'Simply Ball' a cybernetic construct that was once the best agent of the empire's intelligence service. Following two unsuccessful assignation attempts, Keith is beginning to wonder what the real story is, or if he will live to write it...A continuation of a book I never read, (BLOODSPORT). But the characters are good enough that I'm going to look for it. This one is a good book even as a stand alone.