

   Reviews of Daniel Keys Moran books



Reviews




The Armageddon Blues

Emerald Eyes

The Long Run

The Long Dancer


Review of Daniel Keys Moran's books at the Internet Book Information Center


Senior Paper
 on the Social Theory of Generations as it applies to Science-Fiction
Writers, with a review of The Armageddon Blues and DKM as a GenX author.



[John Wenn has provided many author bibliographies to the SF lists
and archives. Here's his capsule review of DKM]

Date: 17 Aug 90 00:12:04 PDT (Friday)
Subject: Author Lists: Daniel Keys Moran
From: jwenn@world.std.com (John Wenn)
To: SF-LOVERS%rutgers:EDU


Daniel Keys Moran is one of the top new names in SF.  The three books I've
read have all been nicely written, fast paced, enjoyable books.  You won't
go wrong reading any of them.  The one novel I haven't read is "The Ring".
From what I understand (and I could be wrong) it's a science fiction
novelization of a Chinese film based on Wagner's "Ring der Niebelungen".
Also, in no way confuse Daniel Keys Moran with Daniel Moran (a pseudonym
of Robert Vardeman, "The Keys to Paradise" trilogy).  Daniel Keys Moran is a
much better writer.



Moran, Daniel Keys      (U.S.A., 1962- )        G


=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*


Legal Stuff:



This document is Copyright (C) 1988-1994 by John Wenn.  All rights reserved.



It can be used in its entirety for personal use.  It may not be sold or
distributed for a fee without prior permission.


 



The Armageddon Blues


Review by Sean Eric Fagan sef@kithrup.com

 The Armageddon Blues is Moran's first book; an earlier version
was printed in IASFM as "All the Time in the World." The
novel is better.

 Blues tells the story of a telepathic time traveler, and Frenchman
who happens to be a couple of centuries old and the "enemy of entropy."

 The story jumps around in time and space quite a bit, with frequent
comments by the narrator (who isn't revealed until the end). At first,
this was somewhat confusing; I've now read the book many times, and the
style has impressed me to no end -- it conveys a sense to the story, I
came to realize, that probably couldn't be conveyed any other way.

 Unlike Moran's other books, Blues is not part of The Tales
of the Continuing Time -- it is, however, part of The Great Wheel
of Existence, the multiverse in which the Tales are set.

 As with most of Moran's books, I cannot recommend them highly enough.
Blues is even more remarkable in that it is his first published
book, and set a standard for all subsequent ones -- which, to my pleasure,
he as mostly lived up to.

 It is unfortunate, indeed, that Blues is out of print. 


[I really wish Ms. Leeper had spent less time analyzing DKM's name
and more time talking about the book...]



                ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (Evelyn C. Leeper)
                AT&T, Middletown NJ
                1 Jun 88 15:36:06 GMT



                  THE ARMAGEDDON BLUES by Daniel Keys Moran
                 Bantam Spectra, 1988, 0-553-27115-6, $3.50.
                      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
     One of the great classics of science fiction is FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON
written by Daniel Keyes.  Now, probably "Daniel Keys Moran" is this author's
real name, but I can't help but feel that the use of his middle name is
calculated make the average bookstore-goer do a double-take when s/he sees
what seems to be a new book of the author of FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON.  This
apparent commercial plot is unfortunate, because it may sour readers on this
book before they have a chance to give it a fair shake.


&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;
     Don't get me wrong--it's not another FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON.  But Moran
has come up with an interesting, if somewhat off-the-wall, concept.  He
takes a woman warrior from the future, an immortal from the past, and a
nuclear holocaust.  Georges, the immortal, is handled well throughout.
Jalian, the warrior, is acceptable as a character, though the "female post-
holocaust warrior" is becoming a bit of a stereotype in science fiction; if
the argument is that women rule because men mucked things up so much, why
give the women all the traits that made the men muck it up?  But as I said,
the characters in general are believable, the plot moves along, the
conclusion is acceptable, and all in all, this shows promise as a first
novel.


                                     Evelyn C. Leeper
                                     201-957-2070
                             UUCP:   att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com
                             ARPA:   ecl%mtgzy@att.arpa
                                     Copyright 1988 Evelyn C. Leeper




Emerald Eyes


Review by Sean Eric Fagan sef@kithrup.com

 Emerald Eyes is the first book in Daniel Keys Moran's The
Tales of the Continuing Time, a life-long project with over thirty
planned books.

 Eyes is the story of the Castanaveras telepaths, genetically
engineered telepaths set in a future Earth, an Earth in which the French-dominated
United Nations is the world government.

 Eyes reads very much like an introduction to me. After I finish
reading it, it seems like I have just finished reading a prologue, and
wonder where the rest of the book is. This is not surprising, as Eyes
is one of Moran's shortest books (The Armageddon Blues being about
the same length, but his other books being considerably longer).

 As with Blues, Eyes is a good book. Perhaps not as good,
but the story is more straightforward, and, while self-contained, also
manages to set the ground for more books and stories in the future.

 In Eyes, we not only meet and get to know Carl Castanaveras,
the first of the telepaths, but we also get to meet, and know, an artificial
intelligence, named Ring; a god (of sorts) Named Storyteller; a "Player"
(something like a hacker) named Trent Castanaveras; and many others, too
numerous to mention here.

 By itself, Eyes would probably be considered an above-average
SF book, with now-traditional "cyberpunk" elements, and with
a dash of genetic engineering thrown in for good measure. But it shouldn't
stand alone -- there are scenes and nuances which make more sense after
reading the next books in the series, and the book becomes even more impressive
then.

 I highly recommend Emerald Eyes, and regret to say that it is
out of print.




Daniel Keys Moran, Emerald Eyes
   [1988, Bantam Spectra, ISBN 0-553-27347-7, $3.50, 243pp.]


Long a favorite of the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup, Daniel Keys
Moran is an author who, by all rights, should be more popular than
he is.  Here is a writer who has an world so thoroughly mapped out
that he plans thirty-two books to tell its entire story.  While his
influences are centered directly in the science fiction field,
his plotting and writing are strong, if not subtle.  What makes
Moran so different from bestselling authors like, say, Orson Scott
Card or Lois McMaster Bujold, who have similar influences and styles?
Maybe it is because he is not as prolific as these two, and can't
satisfy the fan craving for one to two books a year?

Let me get it straight here, and say that Moran's writing is never
going to win him any literary prizes.  His goal is adventure on the
grand scale, not style or depth of human understanding.  Yes, he can
touch on emotions, but it is the action--the events--that concern him.
It is a proud science fiction tradition, of which Asimov was its
chief adherent for so long.  Moran's a modern author, though, and
while he writes in a traditional manner, his subject matter and some
of his language would have been quite shocking in 1950.

Emerald Eyes is the first volume in Moran's epic vision of a series
entitled "The Tales of the Continuing Time," a series that he has
been planning and designing since he was thirteen years old (he goes
into this in a quite amusing afterword to this volume).  I remember
doing the same thing when I was a teenager; I had a couple of spiral
ring notebooks that I wrote the adventures of a couple of friends
and myself interacting with fantasy and movie characters.  I had them
all planned out in alphabetical order, with the first two volumes
entitled Anything Can Happen and Does and Anything Goes
(I know, I know, but I was young, and it is amazing the sheer intensity
and ambition of youth).  I wonder now where those two notebooks are,
having lost my vision sometime in high school.  Moran's vision never
left him, and he continued to define, invent, and catalogue characters
and events in the epic struggle of the "Time Wars."

The timing of Emerald Eyes is in 50 years, when the United Nations
has assumed control over the earth, sometimes by force as in the case
of Japan and the United States.  The French, who backed the UN early,
are the ethnicity that now is in the ascendancy.  Trying to genetically
engineer humans to be better soldiers for them (to help control what
they view as endless resistance), they create a race of telepaths,
the first of which is Carl Castanaveras.  Most of the novel is about
Carl's struggle to free the telepaths (numbering almost 350 after
thirty years of gene splicing and cloning experiments) from being
slaves in the service of the U.N.'s peacekeeping force.

There's a lot going on beyond that in this novel, because of the
depth of Moran's world building.  The story may follow one plot,
but there's many more sub-plots going on that intermix with the
major plot, and while some of them are resolved, many of them are
left to be the subject of later volumes.  In most cases, this would
be extremely annoying, but Moran makes it work through a combination
of first person and third person narration, and through the jutzpah
of trying to envision a series involving time travel in such detail.
After finishing Emerald Eyes, it is hard not to desire more, to
find out exactly what was going on with Camber Tremodian and his
prey, what the House of November was and what was its gift, what a
Long Run entailed, and who was Lady Blue.

This is stuff that cults are built around, and Moran has his faithful.
But, for some reason, none of the faithful seem to be publishers.
There have only been three novels of the Continuing Time published
(I think--I was trying to figure out if Moran's first novel,
Armageddon Blues, was a Continuing Time novel or not), and recently
Moran bought the rights to the books back.  His most recent effort
is a collaborative novel with his sister that I do not believe is in
this series.  I enjoyed Emerald Eyes, and I've been told that
The Long Run is even better.  If it is, I might have to join the
faithful and queue up to wait for future volumes, even if Moran has
to self-publish them.  [Finished May 8, 1997.]
- Glen Engel-Cox 

[ Taken from First Impressions-Installment Twenty-Nine
Copyright &copy; 1997 by 
Glen Engel-Cox.  Permission is granted to use any and all of the text of
First Impressions, provided that no fee is charged and due credit
is given to the author. ]

 
The Long Run


Review by Sean Eric Fagan sef@Kithrup.COM

 The Long Run, the sequel to Emerald Eyes, continues the
story of Trent Castanaveras, who was raised with telepaths, although not
one himself.

 It also continues the story of Denice Castanaveras, who is a
telepath, and starts the story of Mohammed Vance, the PKF Elite (a cyborg)
who ordered a nuclear strike on the telepaths in Eyes.

 Run is the story of Trent the Uncatchable, who died, and rose,
and died again, perhaps forever. It is the story of how Trent started running,
and why, and why, perhaps, he will never stop running until he dies.

 Run is one of my favorite books; I don't think there is one
that I have reread as often as I have reread this one. I enjoy it each
time I reread it, and I fully expect to continue to enjoy it for years
to come (I am terrified of having it fall apart on me, since it's out of
print, and it was hard enough finding this copy several years ago).

 According to Moran, Bantam has agreed to republish Eyes and
Run; if so, I suggest you run to your local bookstore and buy these
two books the moment they hit the shelves -- a chance like that might not
happen again for a long, long time.



[Review extracted from "Reading for Pleasure, #8 (Jan 1990)", a 
book review 'zine available from online archives and BBSs.]


                      THE LONG RUN
                  by Daniel Keys Moran
         Bantam Spectra, 0-553-28144-5, 1989, $3.95
                 Review by Darryl Kenning


This is Mr. Moran's third book. From the book inset, it appears
that all three are part of a continuing story. The Long Run is a
story of great adventure. It's antecedents are clearly in
Cyberpunk and computers as a way of life are integral to the
story. Yet, they are only a part of the grand vista painted by
the author -  one can sense the sweep and mass of history
surrounding the story.



In many ways this book has the same FEEL as the Foundation Series
or the early Heinlein novels, and is frankly an amazingly well
written story from so new an author (well, new to me anyway).
This is one of the few books I have read where the computer story
base works well. It is unobtrusive, and yet at the same time I
developed a keen sense of empathy with the computer persona.


Mr. Moran's first novel THE ARMAGEDDON BLUES won critical
acclaim, the second EMERALD EYES was not as broadly reviewed.
Based upon this book I, for one am going to my favorite
bookseller this very afternoon and see if I can get them both.
And then I'll try not to devour them at once, but savour the
pleasure. This is a rare talent and a very enjoyable novel. I
highly recommend it.


                     rating (0 to 5)
                          *****
                          - 5 -
 



The Last Dancer


Review by Sean Eric Fagan sef@Kithrup.COM


        The Last Dancer, by Daniel Keys Moran



                sef@kithrup.com (Sean Eric Fagan)
                Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd.
                08 Oct 93 00:00:39 GMT
           


Dancer is the third book published in Moran's Tales of the
Continuing Time, a series he says will be approximately thirty books.  The
first two books published in the series were Emerald Eyes, about a
group of genetically-engineered telepaths, and The Long Run, about
a (non-telepathic) relative of those telepaths and his adventures. 


I have to admit, I am biased:  I liked Eyes a fair amount, and
really liked Run.  (In fact, Run is probably one of my
favorite stories, and one that I enjoy rereading again and again.)
Eyes is an early book by Moran (his second published one, I
believe), and it does show.  It shows up more when reading Run,
which is a better-written novel.  The two books combined, however,
impressed me by their consistency:  no glaring errors showed up.  In an
e-mail discussion, I pointed that out to Moran, and he commented that he
hoped that was the case, as he has mapped out all or most of the
characters in the Continuing Time for most of his life. 


And that shows up for most of Dancer.  There are some things that,
after having seen the Moran's timeline (posted to Usenet last year), I
would have thought would not have shown up for a couple of books or so. 
But, for the most part, the book fits right into that timeline, and
explains more about the Time Wars, and the Continuing Time, as well as a
couple other characters and events mentioned in the first two books. 


Emerald Eyes was (largely) the story of Carl Castanaveras and his
fellow telepaths, in their attempt to survive in a world that, for the
most part, does not want them to.  In addition, we met the god Named
Storyteller, the AI named Ring, the Player named Trent Castanaveras, the
Image Ralf the Wise and Powerful, and a few other interesting characters.



The Long Run was (largely) the story of Trent the Uncatchable,
Trent the Thief, Trent Castanaveras, and how he decides to (try to) steal
the LINK.  In addition, we meet Camber Tremodian, with the black eyes, and
Denice Castanaveras, possibly the last surviving telepath, the PKF Elite
Mohammed Vance, and a few other interesting characters. 


The Last Dancer is (largely) the stories of Denice Castanaveras,
and Gi'Tbad'Eovad'Dvan, a Shield, and Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon, a Dancer. In
addition, we meet a few other Dancers, a Keeper of the Flame or two, and
find out more about the Name Storyteller, and the Nameless One, who
appears to also be Camber Tremodian, as well as a bunch of other
interesting characters. 


Unlike the first two books, Dancer is not largely the story of one
person.  Instead, a serious chunk of the book (a third, at a rough guess)
is devoted to the stories of Dvan and Sedon, large parts of which happen
approximately 50,000 years before the the parts involving Denice. As one
might guess from that, the timeline in the book jumps around a bit,
although usually not multiple thousands of years at at time; the first two
books did this as well, although not as much.  But Moran manages to carry
it off well, at least most of the time. 


My main gripe with that section is that, well, I found I did not really
care about Dvan and Sedon; I did care about Denice: she was a person to
be, and I felt for her.  Dvan and Sedon were not people; I did not
understand them, and did not really feel for them.  As such, the section
of the book that takes place 50,000 years in the past, while very
interesting on the background and other information it yields, just did
not hold my interest as much, and I found myself thinking it was too long.



On the whole, I would say that Dancer is a good book.



Comparing it to the other two, I would say that the basic story is as
interesting as that in Eyes, but the quality is closer to that of
Run. If you have read Eyes and/or Run, I strongly
recommend The Last Dancer; if you have not read them, then I still
recommend the book, as it can stand largely on its own (although reading
the other two does help; with any luck, Bantam will be reissuing them).



This is Moran's fifth book, and I sincerely hope he continues to publish.




%T _The Last Dancer_
%A Daniel Keys Moran
%G ISBN 0-553-56249-5
%I Bantam Spectra Books
%D 1993
%P 594 pages



