Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780446602938
ISBN number: 0446602930
Label: Aspect
Manufacturer: Aspect
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: April 01, 1997
Publishing house: Aspect
Sale Popularity Level: 1241496
Studio: Aspect
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Product Description:
Transporting a freight of information between two human colonies in the far-flung reaches of the universe, Katmer Al-Shei is accused of smuggling artificial intelligence, and stumbles upon a nest of conspiracies.
Amazon.com Review:
Sarah Zettel's very first novel (Reclamation) showed her to be an up-and-coming author with promise. She delivers on that promise with Fool's War, a book that is never what it seems. The main character--Dobbs--is a modern Fool, someone who serves as both entertainer and psychoanalyst for the ships that ply the stars. When the ship on which Dobbs is serving accidentally delivers a rogue artificial intelligence to an unsuspecting planet, a secret that has held the galaxy together will threaten to tear it apart. This is a grand, fast-moving story with delightful characters and insightful social commentary. And darn fun to read.
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Rated by buyers 
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Push aside those who can't appreciate strong female leads in a novel. They live in the dark ages with single tracked minds. The strong characters here don't go barefoot in the kitchen baking their husbands cookies, but rather they are out in space hauling around data, avoiding customs officials and dodging the AI-controlled stations. They pilot, command, order and also fight, cheat, lie and wage war. Fellow crew on the spaceship Pasadena are male, yet no conflicts arise which challenge the authority of the female captain. Relationships are decent (unlike many SF novels written by men where women crew are just crew sexpots) and mixed with solid, inviting and informative dialogue.
The cast of characters was so good, the plot could have been senseless yet still would have been a good book. But blessed be Sarah Zettel, who also put a lot of originality into the book... filled with space travel, AI cyberpunk, space habitations, post-modern theology and post-modern space-faring culture. Each plot twist did exactly that to me- twirled me around to face a different direction, a dirction in which I had to continually adjust my expectations for where the characters will find themselves and how they will solve their epic dilemma.
Not all books that I read I give an outstanding review for... but this one beckoned me to glorify it.
Rated by buyers -
A really interesting, if not amazing book. A Fool is basically a 'human relationship consultant' you could call it. Her job is to keep crews amused, etertained, and functioning smoothly.
This particular Fool has a job on a ship. However, she comes across a plot to foment violence between man and machine, and she must put her skills to work to stop this.
A secret ability comes in very handy when trying to accomplish this end.
Rated by buyers -
This was my very first and is still my favorite Sara Zettel story. A wonderfully flawed character that gets close to your heart right up till the end, then leaves you confused and wondering if you understand what it is to be human at all. The humour reminded me of Heinlein at times. The drama reminded me of Iain M. Banks. The story was totally unique to my reading. Maybe similar to other stories, but the totality of the book was totally unique to me, and I loved it.
Rated by buyers -
"Fool's War" was Sarah Zettel's second published novel and is one of the best and most original books that a sci-fi author of either sex has written in the last decade.
One of the principal characters in the book is a muslim woman. If you have little or no personal experience of professional muslims and think of them in terms of stereotypes, you may have some difficulty with this book. And if you also have a stereotypical idea of how women write - this point goes for males and females alike - and start projecting your own gender preconceptions onto this book, you may get funny ideas about it.
Judging Sarah Zettel as a writer and not as a woman writer, and speaking as someone with a reasonable number of male and female Muslim friends and colleagues, most of whom are devout but not fundamentalists, I found the book excellent and the Muslim characters perfectly plausible.
The book is set five hundred years in the future, at a time when humans have spread to many stars. One of the greatest dangers to spaceships, habitats and terraformed colonies is that sentient and independent intelligences can develop in their computer systems.
Starship captain Katmer Al Shei is trying to recruit new crew members for her ship the "Pasadena" and signs on Evelyn Dobbs as the ship's professional fool. The cover role for the Fool's Guild members on starships is that their jokes help starship crew stay sane in space.
Although they do perform this role, the members of the Fool's guild are much stranger and more important than they appear and have a vital secret purpose. Soon after Evelyn Dobbs signs on to the Pasadena she has to try to avert a war which could destroy worlds - and meanwhile everyone on the ship is in danger.
This novel is something else - part cyberpunk, part space opera, but mostly sui generis. I strongly recommend it, expecialy to anyone who enjoyed Sarah Zettel's other novels such as "Reclamation" and "The Quiet Invasion."
Rated by buyers -
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This one sat on my 'to-read' shelf for a long time, after I bounced off her first, Reclamation, which has an excruciatingly slow start. Fool's War was a New York Times Notable Book of 1997 (and Reclamation won a Locus Award for Best First Novel...)
The setup is uncomfortably topical -- the story-now is 500 years after violent religious wars, started by Islamic extremists, almost wrecked Earth. The subsequent diaspora to the colony worlds simply spread out the same old hatreds. Now the ugly chickens are flapping home to roost....
I can't say very much about Fool's War's plot without spoiling things for you, but Zettel spins an impressively twisty tale. She constantly plays with the reader's expectations, and she (mostly) plays fair -- though her storytelling craft still has some rough spots in this sophomore effort. A cover blurb compares her to Heinlein and Asimov, but there's more than a touch of Van Vogt's signature rapidfire scene-changes here.
Fool's War is somethng of a grrrl powr-fantasy -- and I do like a well-done power-fantasy, especially one with a light touch. Here's Pilot Yerusha, in a moment of reflection within the storm of denouement: "I'm saving the human race so I can go on a date..." If you like to see femmes kicking butt that *needs* kicking, you'll like Fool's War.
Zettel's authorial hand does get a bit heavy with her villains, and in pointing characters where they need to go for the subsequent plot-twist. But overall it's good, clean fun, and I'll have to do some Zettel catchup reading soon.
review copyright 2001 by Peter D. Tillman
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