Cowboy Angels

Adam

Anyone read this yet?



America, 1984 - not our version of America, but an America that calls itself the Real, an America in which the invention of Turing Gates has allowed it access to sheaves of alternate histories. For ten years, in the name of democracy, the Real has been waging clandestine wars and fomenting revolution, freeing versions of America from communist or fascist rule, and extending its influence across a wide variety of alternate realities. But the human and political costs have proven too high, and new President Jimmy Carter has called an end to war, and is bringing troops and secret agents home. Adam Stone is called out of retirement when his former comrade, Tom Waverly, begins to murder different versions of the same person, mathematician Eileen Barrie. Aided by Waverly's daughter, Linda, Adam hunts for his old friend across different sheaves, but when they finally catch up with Waverly, they discover that they have stumbled into the middle of an audicious conspiracy that plans to exploite a new property of the Turing Gates: it will change not only the history of the Real, but that of every other sheaf, including our own. COWBOY ANGELS combines the high-octane action and convoluted plots of the TV series 24 in a satirical, multi-layered alternate reality thriller.
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Electric Monk

Electric Monk

That sounds awesome… and exactly what I'd (sadly) expect out of Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter elected president in 1984 (or '80) though strikes me as rather implausible in this kind of world. The only offhand I can come up with is that he's VP in 1976, turfed along with the President (Edward Kennedy?) by Reagan (or Baker, or someone) in 1980 and mounts a comeback in 1984. Otherwise he's just a mediocre governor from a small Southern state who lost in the '76 primaries.


Not available in Montreal bookstores so I suppose I'll have to wait until someone reviews it on here before I go to Amazon.
 

Marius

I just bought it yesterday, and was planning on starting a thread about it. I've read about 50 pages so far, it seems pretty good so far. What's McAuley's other stuff like?
 

Ivan Druzhkov

Marius said:
I just bought it yesterday, and was planning on starting a thread about it. I've read about 50 pages so far, it seems pretty good so far. What's McAuley's other stuff like?
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I've only read one of his novels, Pasquale's Angel, and I wasn't that impressed with it. The basic idea, a TL where Leonardo da Vinci starts an industrial revolution in Florence, was interesting, but I didn't think he really did all that much with it. It also relied, like a lot of AH, on having a murder mystery as the driving force behind the plot, which in my opinion has become too cliched to be enjoyable anymore. I suppose my enjoyment of the story was ruined by my recent reading of Jack Faust, which took a similar concept but made it more dynamic.

Still, it isn't all bad. Niccolo Machiavelli shows up throughout the book as a hard-drinking private investigator, and he's literally the Platonic ideal of awesome.
 

Adam

Ivan Druzhkov said:
I've only read one of his novels, Pasquale's Angel, and I wasn't that impressed with it. The basic idea, a TL where Leonardo da Vinci starts an industrial revolution in Florence, was interesting, but I didn't think he really did all that much with it. It also relied, like a lot of AH, on having a murder mystery as the driving force behind the plot, which in my opinion has become too cliched to be enjoyable anymore. I suppose my enjoyment of the story was ruined by my recent reading of Jack Faust, which took a similar concept but made it more dynamic.

Still, it isn't all bad. Niccolo Machiavelli shows up throughout the book as a hard-drinking private investigator, and he's literally the Platonic ideal of awesome.
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Hmm, sounds interesting alright.
 
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