Cowboy Angels: Jason Bourne meets Sliders

[Alexander Hamilton]

Has anyone read Cowboy Angels by Paul McAuley? Field agents ("cowboy angels") of "the Company" fight covert wars in alternate Americas.
One of the most political AH novels I can remember, it raises interesting qustions of whether and how the USA which has developed cross dimensional gates should intervene in other Americas under fascist or communist dictatorships or suffering from the after effects of nuclear war.
As the book progresses we learn that the TL which developed the "Turing Gates" is not ours and that the Company is the Central Intelligence Group with most of the cowboy angels being veterans of not WW II but "the Russian Campaign".
The book gets confusing when it urns out that the Gates can also be used for time travel and it becomes hard to figure out not only where the heroes are but when. I then just ends without much of a conclusion. Perhaps the author has a sequel or even a series in mind.
But the above may just be one man's opinion and I would like to read the reactions of other forum members to this intriguing book.

AH

 

[Sicarius]

I really enjoyed this book. It was fast paced and had some interesting alternate realities, and ideas on what the discovery of alternate realities would mean, socially and politically. I particularly liked the description of the boom towns that developed around the gates, with people and foods and Elvises from different realities intermixing.

And it's cheap on the Kindle!

If someone is considering it and wants to get a feel for the style and setting, here's a short story set in the same universe.

 

[Marius]

Yeah, I thought it was pretty good, but I agree with Alexander, the ending was a bit weak. And the time travel subplot got quite confusing.

Was quite good overall, and was an interesting concept.

 

[edvader]

Good.Read ALTERNITIES by Michael Kube-Mcdowell.THAT has some interesting points.The ending for Cowboy Angels does seem week.

 

[B_Munro]

Fun read, although I wish he'd gone into a bit more detail about some of the alternate worlds, including the agents homeworld: we don't see anything but the variant USAs. (And the AH seems a bit improbable in some cases: failed Smedley Butler coup leads to a Stalinist US and a right-wing Cuban "Taiwan" with reimposed slavery? Pull the other one.)

Bruce

 

[Sicarius]

The ending took me by surprise a bit, but it was a good culmination of the story and themes in that the character realizes that his actions are in some respects meaningless, because there will always be alternate universes where he succeeds or fails, but continues with his life anyway.

Good.Read ALTERNITIES by Michael Kube-Mcdowell.THAT has some interesting points.The ending for Cowboy Angels does seem week.

I was just thinking about this book last night, as I caught sight of it on my shelves at home. I actually really enjoyed a lot of that book, especially its more in-depth exploration of a few worlds, but jesus christ the freaky sex torture shit was just not cool. I could have gone without that pretty easily. And it pretty much meant I could never recommend it to anyone.