he fates of four worlds are colliding on Kevarzangia Two, the colony outpost cohabitated by sentient aquatic natives and a heterogeneous array of air-breathing aliens. A forthcoming peace summit will bring together the stranded ex-cultists of the Skartesh, the desperately water-deprived Ninrana, a male-repressing aquatic race called the Ylydii, and the 'Zangians themselves, who are still uneasy about increasing League involvement in the affairs of K-2.
As Administrator Ana Hansen and Jadiara mu T'resa's Bio Rescue team prepare for the conference, an increasingly alarming number of things go wrong. The gargantuan mogshrikes break old patterns and start appearing in previously safe waters, even as a once-symbiotic insect species establishes an ominously massive hive on the colony's doorstep. The Ylydii spaceship is hijacked by privateers en route to K-2, but Burn mu Znora's daring rescue of the Ylydii princess, Liana, goes unappreciated by the man-hating Queen Carada.
The conference goes further awry when the Skartesh delegate is attacked; he's replaced by the reluctant Shon Valtas, a spy who once infiltrated the cult by assuming their leader's face. Meanwhile Burn, a 'Zangian modified for fighter duty, finds a bomb on the host spaceship. The conference is relocated to the surface, but Burn worries that the bomb was too easy to find.
Burn's attention is fixed on Liana. She seems to be hiding a secret, but not even Ana, who has psychic abilities, knows what it might be. The lyrical openness she'd shown during the rescue was gone once Carada appeared, replaced by desolate compliance. Carada, for her part, seems to have her own hidden agenda for the Ninrana and the Skartesh.
A pathologist's sudden bizarre infection offers one clue to solving the serial disasters. Meanwhile the presence of anatomically modified individuals like Burn, Shon and Jadaira leads to an unsettling question: What if someone else at the summit has been altered?
Stardoc without the doc
S.L. Viehl is best known for creating the popular Stardoc series, featuring Cherijo Torin, whose bitter attitude and constant hail of corrosive sarcasm made her, toward the end, one of the most unpleasant protagonists this side of Thomas Covenant. Unfortunately, removing Stardoc from the League/Hsktskt universe leaves a gaping hole with no one to fill it: Afterburn is populated entirely by the kind of thumbnail-sketch supporting characters that held back the Stardoc novels.
This is the sequel to last year's Bio Rescue, which established the aquatic colony world of Kevarzangia Two. Those hoping for a new Stardoc-style series starring Jadaira mu T'resa will be disappointed: Jadaira is offstage or in the background for most of Afterburn, while the events of Bio Rescue are referenced obscurely enough to baffle newcomers. Sometimes this results in howlers like Burn's early comment that Jadaira "used to be a lot more fun before she was saved from death by that omnipotent, miraculous force."
Perhaps she was, as she's not much fun here; but neither is anyone else. The characterization is part space opera, part Star Wars cantina: Everyone is an earnest, dedicated professional savant, with anthropomorphic shorthand ("he's a dog, she's a killer whale") in place of a real sense of alien biology or mentality. The effect is that of a story featuring 1950s milkmen, firemen and astronauts. They're all the same, you say? Nonsense: They all have different hats. Substitute fins and snouts for hats and you have Afterburn.
This is frustrating because there's a solid idea at the heart of Afterburn. The increasing natural hostility on K-2 provides an undertow of menace. At the same time, it mirrors Viehl's theme of rampant intolerance: Afterburn's villain is not the harridan queen but the groupthink bigotry she represents, and no race is immune—humans are the worst of all.
