HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''The Merchants of Souls'' is a 2001
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...
novel by
John Barnes John Charles Bryan Barnes MBE (born 7 November 1963) is a former professional football player and manager. He currently works as an author, commentator and pundit for ESPN and SuperSport. Initially a quick, skilful left winger, he moved to ce ...
and the third book in the ''Thousand Cultures'' series.


Summary

The book follows Giraut Leones, a special agent who has been betrayed by those he thought he could trust. He has sworn off of working for the Office of Special Projects but is drawn back after discovering that a group has begun recording the personalities of the deceased and is using them for their own entertainment. This is considered an affront to Leones and many of the peoples of the Thousand Cultures, threatening to break the fragile balance in place.


Characters

* Giraut Leones - An experienced agent and musician from Nou Occitan who was brought back from leave to address a new threat to personal liberties. * Raimbaut Bovalhor - A long-dead friend of Giraut, whose psypyx is installed in Giraut's brain as a witness against commercialization of psypyxes. * Laprada Prieczka - A young new female OSP agent, a member of the Council of Humanity, granddaughter of celebrated OSP hero Lohemo Prieczko; love interest to Raimbaut. * Dji - elder OSP supervisor to Giraut, Laprada, Piranesi, and Paxa; one of "Kiel's Boys," graduate of OSP Class Four along with Shan, Lohemo Prieczko and Sir Qrala. * Shan - elder OSP supervisor and friend to Giraut, Margaret, Qrala, Paxa, Piranesi, and other OSP agents. * Piranesi Alcott & Paxa Prytanis - Military husband and artistic wife; both are OSP agents from Hedon, the so-called "Pleasure Culture." * Margaret - Giraut's ex-wife from Caledony, the culture where they met and fell in love, and then both chose to join the OSP. * Sir Qrala - an elder experienced OSP agent; estranged friend of Shan and Dji from their days as "Kiel's Boys."


Planets referenced

* Earth — the home planet of humanity in the Inner Sphere; the Sol System with its local colonized planets and their satellites, both natural and artificial; also the colonies of Alpha Centauri and other neighboring star systems. * Söderblom (home to the rationalistic pleasure-seeking culture of Hedonia, where Giraut goes on vacation, and also of Freiporto, an anarcho-criminal culture where, until recently, an extreme version of
Social Darwinism Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in We ...
was the only law and slavery its currency). * Nansen (Margaret's home planet; two cultures, Caledony and St. Michael, share the planet peacefully). * Wilson (Giraut's home planet) - one of the few colony planets that had a single human culture seeded (Nou Occitan) because of its unusual orbit around
Arcturus , - bgcolor="#FFFAFA" , Note (category: variability): , , H and K emission vary. Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Boötes. With an apparent visual magnitude of −0.05, it is the third-brightest of the ...
, and its scarcity of land (according to the rules of the Charter). * Briand (a high-gravity planet orbiting Metallah, a very bright star, where two human literary cultures were seeded, clashed, and eventually destroyed each other); described in "Earth Made of Glass".


Reception

Critical reception for ''The Merchants of Souls'' was mixed, with the
Orlando Sentinel The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is the primary newspaper of Orlando, Florida, and the Central Florida region. It was founded in 1876 and is currently owned by Tribune Publishing Company. The ''Orlando Sentinel'' is owned by parent company, '' Tribune P ...
giving it a positive review while
Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...
panned the novel. Kirkus Reviews also gave a mixed review, stating that it was a "Soporifically plotted story of ideas that, despite some sly social satire, gets lost in interminable talk about human identity, truth, and memory." In contrast,
Locus Online ''Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field'', founded in 1968, is an American magazine published monthly in Oakland, California. It is the news organ and trade journal for the English-language science fiction and fantasy fields ...
named it one of their recommended reads of 2001 for science fiction novels and nominated it for a 2002
Locus Award The Locus Awards are an annual set of literary awards voted on by readers of the science fiction and fantasy magazine ''Locus'', a monthly magazine based in Oakland, California. The awards are presented at an annual banquet. In addition to the pl ...
.


See also

*
Interstellar teleporter Teleportation is the theoretical transfer of matter and/or energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. It is a common subject in science fiction and fantasy literature, film, video games, and television. I ...
* ''
Tunnel in the Sky ''Tunnel in the Sky'' is a juvenile science fiction novel by American writer Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1955 by Scribner's as one of the Heinlein juveniles. The story describes a group of students sent on a survival test to an uninhabited ...
'' * ''
Gridlinked ''Gridlinked'' is a science fiction novel by British writer Neal Asher. His first novel, it was published by the Macmillan Publishers imprint Pan Books in 2001. It contains elements of the technological inventiveness of hard science-fiction wi ...
''


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Merchants Of Souls, The 2001 American novels 2001 science fiction novels American science fiction novels Novels by John Barnes Tor Books books