Shannon C.’s review of Callahan’s Legacy by Spider Robinson
Science fiction novel released by Tor 15 Sep 97
One of the reasons that I started reviewing correlates directly with something Spider Robinson said in the first of his Callahan’s books: “Shared joy is increased, shared pain is lessened.” I know there’s nothing that makes me feel better than knowing that someone loved a book as much as I did. And even if nobody else read a book I hated, I at least feel better after I’ve written my thoughts on the book.
This is why, when I finished the seventh book in the Callahan’s Series, I chose to talk about it here, even though it’s not a romance, and it’s in the middle of a series, so I don’t expect a huge overlap in readership. (Not that the non-romance thing has ever stopped me before.) The book left me feeling so angry that I figured I might as well talk about it here.
The Callahan’s books are basically about this out of the way bar in New York which seems to attract a diverse clientele, from talking dogs to cyborg aliens to benign vampires to, well, science fiction fanboys who are anviliscious self-inserts for the author. The first few books of the series are wonderful, especially the first one. Then it became obvious that Mr. Robinson was basically writing to his fans, and the books stopped being fun.
In this latest installment, well, it’s a typical evening down at the bar. Some interesting characters walk in, including a guy named Buck Rogers who has some serious money to burn (literally), a man who cannot feel pain, and a woman who is ugly enough to stop a clock. Then, of course, the bar denizens are required to save the world. Again. If you are sensing a somewhat weary, been-there-done-that tone from the writing of this paragraph, it’s because it’s intentional. All Callahan’s books start out this way. It’s usually charming, except when it’s not. And in this case it’s not more often than it is.
The major problem that I had with this installment in the Callihan universe aside from the fact that the formula’s getting a bit stale is that Spider Robinson’s politics and mine do not mesh. Normally, I can ignore that. I just hate being preached to, and this book was sooo freaking preachy. Not only that, but there was a whole section where the characters talk about how it’s really OK that a thirteen-year-old boy experimented sexually with his stepfather if the kid initiated it. Uh, no. No, it’s not. I could write an entire blog post about why I find this idea so incredibly repellent, but this is really not an appropriate forum.
I did enjoy Spider Robinson’s humor, and I liked seeing old characters, but, ugh, I simply couldn’t get past the OMGWTFBBQ factor of that whole child sexuality thing. As I said, the first three Callahan’s books are wonderful, and you can even read up to the fifth book and still get a good experience, but I won’t be finding out what else happens to the Callahan’s gang.
Grade: D+
Summary:
It’s more than twenty years since Spider Robinson revealed the existence of Callahan’s bar, and the original bar is gone. Mike Callahan is gone, too, but not forgotten. His spirit lives on in the new bar, called Mary’s Place, named for his daughter.On this particular morning, Jake Stonebender, proprietor of Mary’s Place, wakes up and crawls out of bed, not realizing how big a mistake he’s made. It’s going to be one of those days. It’s not that his lovely wife, Zoey Berkowitz, is nine and a half months pregnant. Maybe it’s the early morning knock on the door and the incredibly ugly person who greets Jake and startles him so badly that he spills Zoey’s urine sample – all over the misshapen mistake of nature standing in front of him. That’s when he realizes that this is going to be a day of reckoning.
After this inauspicious start, the day takes a turn for the worse when a huge storm rips the roof off the bar – and moments later drops another, better roof on it. Then the guy with the suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills arrives and starts making them into paper airplanes that he cheerfully launches toward the fireplace.
That’s when Mary Callahan and her husband, Mickey Finn, show up, unconscious, appearing literally out of nowhere. And they have bad news. They’ve come to warn the barfolk that a three-eyed, three-toed, three-everythinged purple monster – the nastiest, most vile servant of the Beast – is going to descend on them within mere hours. The fate of life on Earth will depend on the collective karma of the bar when they confront this all-powerful monster.
Through laughter and tears, with puns powerful enough to melt Formica, the most famous bar in all of spacetime is going to rock this night… but will the Earth survive?
No excerpt was available.
