The Widowmaker Unleashed

I started reading this book because it was part of Mike Resnick's general set of future history books including the razor hot Santiago and the triumph of storytelling, Ivory (go put this one in your shopping cart right now if you're into serious dramatic SF). I was not to be disappointed.In a way, The Widowmaker: Unleashed is a study in what it means to be a famous gunmen in an age of mass media in a vast territory where "the law" is only sparsely present and enforced on an irregular basis. As countless Westerns have shown, aging gunmen face death at the hands of those looking to make their reputations. However, being the best, the Widowmaker will not go down without a fight, and having walked through a hundred death traps unscathed in his younger days, he intends to get through this one last challenge: how to survive his own reputation and failing capabilities.I started the book and within two days I came to the last page after two late nights up until two in the morning, the story really drives forward without tripping over itself in an attempt to get to the end.Definitely worth my money and time.

Now the widowmaker's really back. Wasn't he two times before? He was. And he wasn't! What kind of answer is that you may ask. It is that kind of answer that may make your read not only this book but the whole trilogy, the story of a SF-hero, a gunman, a thriller that never gets boring. You want to read about a man who found some fountain of youth to return to a life where he's looking for peace and where he finds nothing but old and new enemies? You want to know how he fights his way through space and despair during dozens of years? Then you should start with the Widowmaker, see him reborn, and finally find him unleashed!

Over a hundred years have passed before the 62 year old Jefferson Nighthawk, aka Widowmaker, is revived and cured of his disease. Unfortunately, his dream of retirement with no enemies to worry about do not materialize. The two clones that had helped him maintain the finances to keep him in cyrogenic freeze had created new enemies for him. These enemies included the men of a criminal warlord terminated by his first clone. His second clone had exacted revenge by killing the first clone's killer/employer a powerful planetary leader. Further, the second clone terminated another corrupt planetary leader. With the help of Ito Kinoshita, the man who had trainer both clones and companion to the second clone, and Sarah Jenner, the lady he decides to spend the rest of his life with, they create a third clone and devise a plan to let the original retire in peace.