Berkley, 1984, $2.95, ISBN 0-425-07297-5, 326 pgs., paperback

Here’s a book whose title was selected based on marketing, as it has precious little to do with the plot or characters. I suppose it’s a play off the spaceship name, HeavenStar, but that’s neither here nor there.

The first half details the daily lives of about a dozen characters, from artists to technicians to security to medical. It’s a fairly slow start, so much so I started skipping pages to “get on with it.”

Finally, someone is murdered, and then bits and pieces of the ship start to malfunction. Finally, the fabric of time and space start to unravel, causing more failures.

That’s where the Zen of the novel loses me, much the same way I find “and it was only a dream” endings rather annoying. Just as the region of space is transforming the ship, so it also is transforming the crew into gods. Or at least demi-gods. They can still be squashed or melted. Go figure.

The point starting about 50% of the way in marks the start of strong writing, and that lasts until the 90% point. The first half drags and the last 10% doesn’t make a heckuva lot of sense.

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