This book.
Sucks.

It fucking SUCKS.

I reference it a surprising amount for a book that fucking S U C K S this much.

where to even begin.

How about with how the story came into being?

I love that Wikipedia was able to cut this down into one paragraph. The back of the book for mine had this as like 2 pages of text.

Probably Martin's own input.

Storywise? It's honestly weak. Like, it's very short and it definitely could have been even shorter.

Fucking love that THIS is what we got out of the complaint that all scifi protags are written as early 30s white dudes.

"What if we made it an aging hispanic man instead"

yikes. Like, this feels like it would have been better as a western? It's trying to be one, it feels like.

Guy gets into a scuffle in a bar over a woman and kills A DIPLOMAT, runs off into the totally-not-bayou wilderness.

Finds some aliens hiding out under a mountain. Gets captured.

Oh no, the aliens do need his help tho! A man had tracked him into their cave and is escaping!

Ramón, our protag, is sent out to chase down a dude with an alien guard. EXCITING, I thought. As a stupid teen.

There is something real fucked up about "hey these aliens trapped me and are using me as a hunting dog now, but damn, they tell a good story and maybe I did my life wrong and I should do it better.

Oh, did I mention Ramón, while in captivity of the aliens, had his body like... regress and he's a strong young buck again.

It's like he's an early 30s.... dude... and... oh.

He cunningly tries to trick his captor, it fails, he gets depressed and (like the protagonists of fellow over-loved writer Stephen King) tries a second time and then it works!

He catches up to the man and
oh
oh look
you ready?
it's the only good twist of the entire book!

It's him! The original Ramón is 'the second man'! We switched perspective character when the first guy was caught!

That's it

That's the one good part.

now to be clear. I fucking love this. It's actually well executed! The aliens handwave de-aging him as "just part of how their tech does"

and it's an interesting revelation.

Old-Ramón doesn't even recognize his younger self for a while. Eventually again there is another scuffle and Young-Ramón kills the "real" him.

Actually, bonus points in favour of the book.

They don't linger too long on real vs clone stuff. The Clone directly realizes his older self was a shitty person and that his exposure to the aliens (possible stockholm syndrome aside) actually did make him rethink his life.

That's cute. But.

He's now a younger man with the sort of 'walked path ahead of you' privilege a lot of white folk have. So uh. There's that?

So what does he do after he slips his bonds and kills his older self?

OH he just goes back home and assumes his old identity. Even has the clever idea of going back to those aliens. After all, they'd offered him a reward. They knew where some rich veins of ore are! They secretly hide under the mountain after all.

The book ends before we hear a response.

Now.

This ending has some.... problems.

1: Hey my dude. Your old identity KILLED A DIPLOMAT?! Being a younger version of yourself is just going to tag you for identity theft AND murder.

2: why the fuck don't the aliens just kill you? they made a clone just to go hunt down and kill the original.

3: why the fuck did these aliens, hiding under a mountain, offer this guy help MINING THEIR MOUNTAIN?!

That isn't inviting more people to find them?!

oh and why are they under this mountain?

4: These aliens were the victims of a genocide war with a second alien species that humanity is chummy with.

Like.

My dudes.

MY alien friends.

Why the fuck are you trusting this one, very obviously shifty guy? He's written to be untrustworthy.

Why are you doing this?

George R R Martin and 2 dudes (both of whom actually did the publishing, but he's still the top of the list)

couldn't solve this one 380 page little mess of a story.

And you expect this fucker to resolve the Meereenese Knot?

He's writing the next Darksouls(but-not-darksouls) game instead.

It's never going to happen.