Full Tide of Night

Some centuries in the future, the planet Midgard has been settled by interstellar refugees from an Earth overrun by the Erinye, a nihilistic form of synthetic human life. The leader of the settlement, Julia Amalfi, and an adolescent Artificial Intelligence named Cariola now face generalized discontent with their benign autocracy, the ferocious hostility of the Rigorists (neo-Marxists recalling the Khmer Rouge at their worst) and the possible arrival of an Erinye ship from Earth. Amalfi and Cariola meet the enemy with their own wits (in spite of Cariola's fits of adolescent rebellion), as well as with the leadership of young, self-taught military genius Tony Perin. Few of the concepts here are original, but many are used with unusual intelligence, particularly in the military scenario, which lends itself to a good many action scenes ranking with the best in military SF. The Erinye, however, remain fuzzily defined, the Rigorists are almost a caricature and Tony Perin does not always rise above the level of the standard SF/fantasy superman in whose genius we are to believe because the author tells us to do so. While entertaining, the novel is unlikely to engage readers' emotions as intensely as did Dunn's earlier novels, Days of Cain and This Side of Judgment. (Aug.)