Freedom Lost

Just a little above average for this entry. Ryan and Co. land in a hospital redoubt and fight off a gang of stickies. Then they find themselves in a huge mall which acts as a ville. As they explore, Ryan fights a droid in a gladiator-style match for jack, Dean and Jak tussle with thugs in an arcade, and a minor character from the Lord Kaa battle finds himself in charge of a large band of stickies. The banter between Doc and Mildred was always a delight, and the friends browsing in the 20th century mall was never dull. The assault by the muties in the end was nothing special. Decent time-passer, but not great.

This adventure has Ryan's gang starting from a redoubt, traveling to a ville that is really a big mall converted into a sort of self contained town. That's about all this book was really about. This novel had some good and some bad, I will describe some of this as follows: Positive aspects of the story are the interesting things the party encounters during the course of the book. The cryo lab, the scene with J.B. getting an eye exam, the various stores the group finds in the mall, including a funny scene at a comic shop, and a number of references to "pre-dark" stuff. The characterizations were good. A fair amount of series continuity is present in this book, and starting out of the gate, the episode got me interested because of the return of Lester from the novel "Skydark". But this book has its negatives. Overall I got the impression that there was a lack of excitement or a kick to the story, there was no underlying getup-and-go to it at all. The book plodded on with very little action and no promising plot emerged. It was unsatisfying. Kind of like ordering a steak dinner, and finding out the steak is missing. There was no meat to the book. And most of the action scenes were dull and uneventful. And the continuity I mentioned? Well here is an example of how too MUCH continuity can be a problem. For example, when Dean and Jak are in the video arcade, when Jak finds out Dean doesn't remember their first experience with video games in the earlier novel "Shadowfall", Jak then explains what happened the first time. This created three problems. First, at least a page and a half was pretty much cut and pasted from the scene from the earlier book. That is a little overdoing it, and it also led to the second problem, which was the way the scene was entwined in the present. I got confused about where the flashback started and ended, and had to get the other book off the shelf and compare the two to see what was going on. The third problem was that this all takes place in a part of the book that was long overdue for an action scene. Getting a cut and paste from an earlier book instead, I felt kind of cheated out of something better that should have been there. But this kind of feeling was the norm for much of the novel, and it really in my opinion was nothing more than filler in the series. Since this book was steeped in mediocrity, I can't rate "Freedom Lost" any higher than a five, which considering its drawbacks, I am really being generous with that rating.

This is the first Deathlands book I've read. Moved right along, and I found it fascinating. Ryan Cawdor, his son Dean and their friends find a preholocaust shopping mall that is inhabited by a Baron. I liked the future view of looking back at an old mall, and what it becomes in the future. Doc Tanner is a great old guy. The stickie's are nasty little buggers. I'll definitely read more books in the series. Alot of fun.