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William Sanders
BALLAD OF BILLY BADASS AND THE ROSE OF TURKESTAN, THE
book cover


Wildside Press, October 2001


Who recommends: Lynn
Who discommends:

This is a great book and a strong recommend. I bought it because it was available from Embiid and they have stuff for the Palm OS. I generally seem to have reasonably congruent tastes with Melisa Michaels, the editor of Embiid. Embiid does only E-books, Rocket, PC (proprietary reader) and Palm. I got pulled into it by the sample chapters at http://www.embiid.net and was very nervous because with online purchases you can't end-peek... But you can get a definite feel for the book from the sample, probably enough to tell if you like his voice or not.

Billy is Cherokee (his surname is actually Badwater) and Janna is from Kazakhstan. It is pretty pure SF (with a shading of horror.) The story is both funny and dark and caring and feels real in a way that matters. Then there is Billy's grandfather, who may not completely steal the book, but definitely runs off with parts of it. (Being dead is no handicap to him.)

Definite recommend from me for the database.

Sanders is Cherokee too, BTW. I don't know if that is a guarantee of authenticity, (in fact I'm sure it isn't) but his writing is very powerful. I've gone and glommed the other two Embiid books available of his and am about to go in search of backlist and stuff available in paper.--Lynn (20 May 02)



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