cover image War of the Sky Lords

War of the Sky Lords

John Brosnan. St. Martin's Press, $18.95 (252pp) ISBN 978-0-312-07882-9

This sequel to Brosnan's The Sky Lords is as fast-paced and action-packed (and lurid and shallow) as its predecessor. Since the Gene Wars devastated the Earth with biological weapons, civilization has collapsed into a semi-feudal state: an enslaved peasantry of surface dwellers (``earthworms'') pays tribute to the rulers of the Sky Lords, giant airships left over from before the Wars. But former slave Jan Dorwin, in command of the Sky Angel, a brand-new airship which can easily defeat the others, aims to free the groundlings. She is hindered, however, by the sentient computer, which is going insane, that controls the airship; by the diabolical Milo, her old enemy, now bizarrely resurrected after his death in the first book; and by the Sky Lords, unwillingly aided by Ryn, a runaway from a prewar utopian enclave, and his super-high-tech plane. Brosnan's plot and prose are straight out of the pulp adventure tradition, and offer the pleasures of stereotypical characters, a shot of sex and some rather gruesome violence, but nothing more. (July)