The Return of Santiago

Today's post is 'The Return of Santiago' by Mike Resnick. It is 464 pages long and published by TOR. This is a sequel to Santiago also by Mike Resnick. If you have not read either Mike Resnick before or Santiago stop reading this right now and get to your library. Go get some of his stuff, read it and thank me later. I am going to be putting in some changes to my reviewing because I got a professional to read one of my reviews and give me some help. A very big thanks to Angela Leonard from http://darkfaerietales.com/ for taking the time to read and critique my review. So on to the review.

Santiago is a myth of the Far Future. In the year 3407 the democracy is as greedy as ever. More and more of people's rights are being taken in the name of safety.  Danny Briggs is just a thief with a forgettable face. But he is on the run from the law. He takes refuge in an abandoned house. In the attic there a treasure just waiting for the universe to remember it. The poem by Black Orpheus the poet who wrote about everyone who was anyone in the Inner Frontier. Briggs grew up on his tales and legends and the biggest one of all was Santiago. As Briggs reads all of the poem he realizes that Santiago was more than just an outlaw he was a revolutionary, out in the darkness to make the democracy remember that it was to help people not just take from them. So Danny decides that it is time for Santiago to return to the Inner Frontier, time to give the people someone to believe in, someone to fear and more than anything something to hope for again.

Resnick's style is as always wonderful to read. He is a poet not just with the four lines that start each chapter but with the characters in the story. They all come alive as you read them. I loved watching Briggs become Alighieri then into more than he ever dreamed. He is the only one who really changes over the course of the story but he is main character so he is the only one who really needs to change. That said other characters do appear to change but as you read the story you will understand that they are not changing but just revealing parts of their personalities that we did not see before.

Rating five of five stars, ten out of ten, this is another wonderful story from Resnick. Please feel free to tell me what you think about the new review style, what you like, don't like and everything else.