Fripp Enos - space pilot, amateur historian, Reegan Modified and trouble magnet. Khon Tarkosz - navigator, trader, negotiator and card sharp. Fripp and Khon are business partners on the Kraftwerk and Maverick Spacers - tough space hauliers making their living in in fringe space flying cargo between systems, living off the thin pickings left after the Union has had their slice.
After apparently saving a young girl from gang on a backwater world, they find themselves fleeing with the girl across the Warp Spheres with Planetary Security in hot pursuit. Then a forced landing on a jungle world and an encounter with artefacts from a lost ancient alien civilisation changes their fortunes forever.
Note from the "editor": I have very fond memories of this book and it's sequel, as my first taste of space opera in my teens and despite its flaws it and its sequel "Children of the Night" remain amongst my favourite books.
Recently I finally managed to track down the author and get his permission to put the two Space Mavericks books up on Amazon Kindle. I've had the manuscripts scanned and converted to Kindle format, but beyond some light editing in the form of correction of spelling errors and minor re-formatting, these are the books in their original form, warts and all. I've even had the promise that he might complete the trilogy.
With no original editing process and all the problems that that produces - this is really a first draft in essence - it means that the writing is unpolished in places. Nonetheless, I'm going to recommend you read it anyway.
This book's greatest strength is that it's crammed with interesting ideas and a believable space-trading background. Customs officials need bribing. Spaceships need maintenance. Space traders on shore-leave make trouble, so Spaceports are surrounded with a seedy strip. This is Cyberpunk before Gibson.
Warp. The description of warp is by far the most interesting I've come across. It has more depth than the usual thinly disguised conceit that just allows FTL travel. It has properties and behaviour that have bearing on the plot.
Modification. This is an interesting Faustian deal, which I think Kring handles imaginatively. It does make the lead character Fripp Enos rather handy in a bust up, but then I like my heroes to be, well, heroes. And it's a long way from a carte-blanche, especially when the ring starts to mess with its function in the second book.
The "magic" ring. Perhaps it would be pertinent to consider Clarke's Third "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Enough said. The discovery of a vanished advanced ancient civilisation and all the questions that this raises is the plot arc for the trilogy.
Perhaps this is the cut. This is SF after all, and the ideas are why I read SF in the first place. Great writing doesn't guarantee good ideas. "An Enduring Love" and "Lolita" come to mind. Delicious prose, but I hated the books. If you are a "medium, not the message" advocate, don't touch this with an 11ft barge pole. If you can ignore the odd moment of purple descriptive prose then there's a lot of fun to be had here, which was, after all, the author's main intention. Enjoy!
