Daw, 1990, $6.99, ISBN 0-88677-406-3, 526 pgs., paperback

This book started like a clown car in a three-ring circus--starting, stopping, backfiring, jerking, and 27 main characters falling all over the place. For the first few chapters, I had no idea what was going on, and that wasn't amusing me. The only thing that kept me going was that Gear wrote the Spider series, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

In any case, the book finally lurched into gear with a plot about an unimaginably powerful, god-like device discovered by an astute ex-pirate. He foresaw that possessing such a device would entail complete destruction of the human race, and so called in the Brotherhood, which sent a brand new sentient space ship captained by a veteran spacer on the verge of a mental breakdown, which picked up considerable number of diplomats to go look at this device. This is about the time I started losing track of who was who. Fortunately, Gear started killing them off, but added characters just as quickly.

Suffice it to say, Gear created a cosmos full of humans and factions, and lots of double-dealing. And it takes a few chapters to sort them out. After that, the book makes a whole lot more sense, and grabs your interest in several of the characters.

It offers an interesting idea of spaceship battles, though I must admit the shield physics never quite made sense to me, or for that matter, some of the tactical actions. But it was a rollicking good ride nonetheless.

The Artifact wobbled a bit at first, but finally became a solid, if not spectacular, novel.

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