The Duke of Uranium

______________________________________________ Barnes has written a Heinlein juvenile for the early 21st century. He doesn't quite have the Master's grace, but updates the flavor of these fondly-remembered books nicely. Duke is up-to-date, brisk, clever, sexy and fun. Barnes constructs his backstory with some care -- he's used it in three Jak Jinnaka novels so far, with more planned. By the thirty-sixth century, humankind has spread throughout the solar system. We survived an attempted genocide by the alien, retaliated by sterilizing their homeworld, and have settled into an uneasy coexistence with refugees occupying the Pluto and beyond. Even in the 36th century, when "Duke" is set, fusion power has never been developed, so the Outer System still runs on fission, a rather charmingly retro touch. The battered Earth has recovered, and shares power with two huge orbital stations at L4 and L5 -- the unified Hive, and the balkanized Aerie. The inner system runs on solar power, and the outer on good, old-fashioned uranium reactors (hence the title).. Interworld transport is by large light-sail liners.... As expected, the novel ends happily and with a moral: video games are a fine training-ground for apprentice heroes! The Duke is the most fun I've had between book covers in awhile. Barnes has written a fast-moving book, and if some of the plotting doesn't stand up to close inspection, you won't care. Recommended for frivolous relaxation. Happy reading-- Pete Tillman

Our hero, Jak Jinnaka, seems to be more of an anti-hero. He is slightly likeable, but the foreward to the book makes it clear he is not the nicest guy in the galaxy. We see as he graduates from school he is self-absorbed and shallow, and apparently quite manipulative. That being said, Barnes has created a nice universe, with slang as good as Burgess' in Clockwork Orange. True it can be a bit difficult to decipher but it does add a nice flavor to his creation. Jak's friends are likeable enough, and they are, like Jak and his associates and enemies shaded with grey. Faults and virtues peppered throughout their character making them interesting though not really 3-dimensional. There are really 3 parts to the book, our introduction to Jak and the world and the setup for Jak's mission. This is reasonably well done. Not necessarily easy to penetrate but well done. The second, and best part, is the leisurely space voyage to get Jak to his mission. Jak's worldview is challenged by the opinions of crewmembers on the ship he takes from his home to Earth. A sweet romance with a crewmember as well as Jak's joining with the crew and bonding shows Jak at his most sympathetic and likeable. The last and weakest part is the frenzied mission where things fall together very easily, for a reason it turns out. The best part of Jak's adventure is his being thrown together with an alien his culture has taught him to hate and his realization that what he knows isn't necessarily so. Though not great, and a little slow-paced, this is a nice modern mature juvenile science fiction work also readable by adults.

"The Duke of Uranium" is the very readable first of a series of Jak Jinnaka novels, which gets better (A Princess of the Aerie) and better (In the Hall of the Martian King). The series is clearly written for a relatively mature teenage and young adult audience, but it has enough meat to satisfy a more demanding adult reader as well. Some readers seem to think the light sprinkling of coined words could mystify some readers, but the most-used ones are rather obviously related to existing words, not all English. By the context, the reader will soon "dak" (perceive) that "toktru" means something like "talk true" or "I tell you truly" or "You tell us truly." "Tove" (friend) is presumably derived from the Russian "tovarich," and "heet" from the Japanese "hito" (person). There are a few more, but again, the meanings soon become clear from the contexts. This series is not John Barnes' best work, but this book was interesting and enjoyable enough to entice me to read A Princess of the Aerie which I would give about 4 1/3 stars and In the Hall of the Martian King which I would rate at about 4 7/8 stars. I am definitely looking forward to Jak's next adventure. [email protected]

The Duke of Uranium is the first novel in the Jak Jinnaka series. Fifteen hundred years after the development of spaceflight, there are human colonies spread throughout the Solar System. However, they are not alone, for the alien Rubahy have a colony on Pluto, the last remnant of the invading force that survived the sterilization of their home planet. Any century now, the Galactic Court will issue their verdict in the case resulting from that war and maybe issue an Extermination Order against both parties. In the meantime, the round impact craters from the Rubahy bombardment of the Northern Hemisphere by near lightspeed projectiles sparkle like sequins in the sunlight as one approaches the planet.In this novel, Jak is taking his last required class in gen school, bored out of his mind as usual. When the period ends, he and his tove, Dujuv, pre-order their habitual fare at the Old China Cafe and claim a private booth when they arrive so that they can check their admission scores for the Public Service Academy. Jak misses the cutoff for his genetic type by 65 points and Dujuv misses by 11 points. Neither one is likely to be attending PSA. On to the contingency plans; Jak intends to join the Army and Dujuv decides to become a professional slamball player.Soon thereafter, their demmies join them, having accessed the databank after the boys reading their scores removed the privacy flags; Sesh says hello to Jak, but Myxenna plasters Dujuv against the backwall with a kiss. When Dujuv is allowed to come up for air, Myx states that she has made the cut, but Sesh says that she also missed the cutoff. When the boys tell them about their career ideas, Sesh surprises them by saying she is going to be a Social Parasite and just live off her family's money. Then they get down to the important things, like where to spend the evening, and find that Sesh has gotten tickets to the closing performance of Y4UB, the Slec group.Jak returns home to exercise the Disciplines before getting ready to go to the concert. He discusses his career ideas with his Uncle Sibroillo and learns a little more about Uncle Sib's background. After he does his katas, a cord drops over his head and starts to strangle him, but he manages to get out of the cord, so his attacker kicks him in his armored cup over his groin. Uncle Sib has won again, but the score is beginning to be more even.Jak meets the others at the ferry station to take the gripliner over to Centrifuge together. At .9 gees acceleration/deceleration, the trip takes about 22 minutes. As usual, Sesh gets them there before the line at the entrance is too long and they are soon floating through the huge sphere in micro gravity. After the show founds, Jak and company get into the sight/sound/motion of the Slec and then start doing stunts such as the double Immelmann, but Sesh is not there when Jak reaches for her hands. He looks around and sees Sesh being hauled off by four men. Immediately, he attacks the m

John Barnes is one of the finest science fiction writers of his generation; he mixes an exceptional sense of how societies work with a good grounding in hard science, and casts it all into a dramatic framework of interesting characters and tension-driven plotting. I've never read a book of his I didn't enjoy; indeed, I try and read everything he publishes. This book is a young adult novel, and a good one. John Barnes has clearly read the master of the science fiction young adult novel, Robert Heinlein; much of the social setting for this novel builds off of Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" in particular (the need to perform some service, military or otherwise, to become a full citizen). As a teacher who uses young adult novels throughout the year, I have to say that this novel presents two problems for the young reader: one, Barnes' invention of new words will confuse most young readers whose vocabularies may not be strong enough to recognize which words are real and which invented (there were moments I wasn't sure what his new words inferred, despite a doctorate in English and long decades spent reading science fiction); and two, the novel becomes less and less inventive as the pages turn: in his interests in establishing a series, many characters are introduced and conflicts left unresolved, and the main conflict that is wrapped up is done in a particularly formulaic way. I don't want to say more, because I don't want to give away any plot secrets (and the editorial review above gives a decent plot summary), but I found my own excitement growing less at the moment when it should have been accelerating. All in all, a solid effort, but one that forgets Heinlein's basic principle: all books need to be self-contained to be truly effective. Heinlein himself never violated that principle in his juveniles, and Barnes shouldn't either. The mania for series we find among adult readers has not inserted itself as the dominant trend in young adult readers (although there are series to be found, they are not the dominant form writers for this market mostly follow). That said, I would only recommend this book to a very bright young reader, with a solid vocabulary, who will be willing to put up with an ending that is far too open for its own good.