Last Hope

I loved Hall's ARIEL'S DANCE, so I ordered this book at my local bookstore. LAST HOPE is more serious than ARIEL'S DANCE, and has a broader scope, but Hall maintains a light touch with the characters and their occassionally dangerous situations through most of the book. All in all, it was an enjoyable read with good sexual tension between the hero and heroine.Last Hope is a planet colonized by humans in the distant future. Connall, our hero, is a young man on the make, whose entire life centers around his political ambitions--it affects what he eats, where he lives, how he dresses; even who he sleeps with. Arkanna is a naive intellectual who, by virtue of her birth, has the political connections Connall desires. For reasons of their own, they strike a bargain and enter into a marriage of convenience. The day after the wedding, they're off on a quest into the wilderness, looking for a place from which no one has returned.What follows is an adventure that is, more often than not, amusing. The sexual tension between Connall and his new bride is palpable, and the book is basically really fun. However, I thought that the characterizations, especially of Connall (by the end of the novel, I found it difficult to like him, or at very least, sympathize with him), could have been better. Also, the last hundred pages or so don't really fit in with the rest of the book--suddenly, it turns into an ethical story a la BRAVE NEW WORLD, or something along those lines, and thus the conclusion is really anticlimatic. LAST HOPE was, overall, an entertaining, good read, and I would recommend that anyone who enjoys futuristic romances gives it a try.