{"id":1086,"date":"2015-01-02T11:50:35","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T17:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1086"},"modified":"2015-01-02T11:50:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T17:50:35","slug":"a-review-of-the-retrieval-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/a-review-of-the-retrieval-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"A Review of The Retrieval Artist<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The-Retrieval-Artist-cover-web\"<\/a>The Retrieval Artist<\/em><\/a>
\nKristine Kathryn Rusch<\/a>
\nWMG Publishing<\/a>
\nPaperback<\/a> $12.99 Powell’s<\/a>
\nEbook $3.99 Kindle<\/a> Kobo<\/a> Nook<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the decade and a half (roughly) Kristine Kathryn Rusch has been building what has come to be known as The Retrieval Artist Universe<\/em><\/a>, a set of novels and shorter works set in a common universe.\u00a0 The Retrieval Artist<\/em> is the first of these and was originally published in Analog<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 I know because I remember reading it in the hotel the weekend one of my brothers got married.\u00a0 (Don’t ask me how I remember this; I don’t know.\u00a0 I just do.)<\/p>\n

For the past year, Ms. Rusch has been writing a five novel sequence set in the Retrieval Artist Universe<\/em> called Anniversary Day<\/em>.\u00a0 The first two are out, and the remaining three will be published in January, February, and March.\u00a0 ARCs for these three arrived in my mail box the Friday before Christmas.\u00a0 I’m going to read through the whole series, alternating reviews between here and Amazing Stories<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

But I decided to go back and refresh my memory of the inaugural story in the series and post a review as an entry point for those of you who haven’t read any of the books yet.<\/p>\n

Humanity has made contact with a number of different alien races.\u00a0 As you would expect, each one has its own set of beliefs and laws, which sometimes are pretty different from those of humans.\u00a0 By treaty, if you break a law while in alien territory, they can hunt you down and inflict whatever punishment their laws allow, even if the infraction was unintended and no big deal in human terms.<\/p>\n

This has led to the formation of a number of services which will help those hunted by the aliens disappear.\u00a0 Miles Flint is a retrieval artist, someone who hunts down the Disappeared, for a fee, of course.\u00a0 Miles is just about the best retrieval artist there is, and consequently his fees are pretty steep.\u00a0 He only works when he wants to.\u00a0 He has a shabby office in a run-down sector of a dome on the Moon; you have to want to hire him since he only meets prospective clients in person.<\/p>\n

One day Miles is visited by young woman who is the daughter of one of the most powerful men in the solar system.\u00a0 He’s the head of a major corporation, and he’s dying.\u00a0 She wants Miles to find her mother, who disappeared just after she was born.<\/p>\n

Yes, is there a question in the back?…Of course she’s not telling him everything.\u00a0 They never do.\u00a0 Miles is perfectly aware of this.\u00a0 No, I’m not going to tell you what she’s hiding.\u00a0 She’s got multiple secrets, that’s all you need to know.\u00a0 There are plenty of twists in The Retrieval Artist,<\/em> and I don’t want to give anything away.<\/p>\n

Where was I?\u00a0 Oh, yes.\u00a0 Miles is very much the classic hardboiled PI.\u00a0 There have been a number of attempts to blend the PI with either science fiction or fantasy over the years.\u00a0 I started to say the science fiction ones were on the whole more successful than the fantasy attempts, but that’s probably a reflection of my personal taste.<\/p>\n

What’s pretty obvious is that the Retrieval Artist Universe<\/em> is one of the more successful blendings of science fiction and the private investigator.\u00a0 Rusch wouldn’t have kept the series going if there weren’t demand for these stories from readers.\u00a0 She is, after all, a professional.\u00a0 This series blends alien societies, hardboiled detection, and strong characters.\u00a0 I loved The Retrieval Artist<\/em> as much when I reread it as I did the first time all those years ago.<\/p>\n

Like I said, I’m going to review the whole Anniversary Day<\/em> sequence from the beginning, alternating between here and Amazing Stories<\/em>, with the odd numbered novels reviewed at Amazing Stories<\/em> and the even ones here at Futures Past and Present<\/em>.\u00a0 Then I’ll probably go back and work my way through the books I’ve not read yet.\u00a0 It’s part of that reading more for pleasure thing I mentioned yesterday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you like mysteries with depth and alien societies with a hardboiled narration, give this one a try.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Retrieval Artist Kristine Kathryn Rusch WMG Publishing Paperback $12.99 Powell’s Ebook $3.99 Kindle Kobo Nook Over the decade and a half (roughly) Kristine Kathryn Rusch has been building what has come to be known as The Retrieval Artist Universe, a set of novels and shorter works set in a common universe.\u00a0 The Retrieval Artist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[122,117],"tags":[727,767,726],"class_list":["post-1086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analog","category-kristine-kathryn-rusch","tag-anniversary-day-saga","tag-kristine-kathryn-rusch","tag-retrieval-artist-universe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-hw","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1089,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions\/1089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}