Number 97 - Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV - Eric brown

As titles go, that's not a good one.  It took me 4 tries to pronounce it and I still don't think I did it right. Even with the alliteration, it's clumsy.  There's no hard and fast rules about titles, but when they trip off the tongue like it's superglued in place, that's not a great sign.

Fortunately, the story does improve on the title. 

Matt Hendrick is a cop trying to find his estranged wife, who along with her surgeon lover, has kidnapped his daughter.  He's traced her to a distant planet, 4th from the sun Fomalhaut an d the book opens with him telemassing (this particular book's version of teleporting interstellar distances) to the local spaceport.

There he meets the mysterious Tiana, who's girlfriend has recently disappeared. They head off into the wilds to track down their respective loved ones, meeting up with the native inhabitants once there. 

For a story about a quest to a far off exotic planet, two thirds of this could have been set in any regular ship port on planet earth.  It's only in the final 25 pages (this is not a long book, which was the reason i chose it) that the location and storyline justify the sci-fi setting.  Prior to that it was just another regular cop tracing mis-per story.

The style of writing was reasonably good, if a bit bland.  The sections in italics at the end of every chapter from Tiana's point of view were needless and irritating.  There were only 2 that delivered any information we hadn't been given in the preceding chapter. The rest just felt like Brown was repeating himself.

I received this book in one of the bundles that PS publishing offer on their discount site.  I also happen to have books 2 and 4 of the quartet on my shelves. because I already have them, I will pick them up and read them at some point. If they are up to this standard, they will be a decent way to kill an hour or two,  I hope book 3 arrives in the bundle I ordered the other day, then I don't need to make any effort to find book 3