Book Review: 'A Fire in the Sun' by George Alec Effinger
'A Fire in the Sun' (290 pp.) was published by Bantam Spectra in April 1990, and features cover art by Steve and Paul Youll.
This is the second volume in the so-called 'Marid Audran' or 'Budayeen' franchise. My review of the first volume 'When Gravity Fails,' is here. ‘‘The Exile Kiss’ is the concluding volume. (1991). A collection of related short stories, titled ‘Budayeen Nights’, was released in 2003.
'Fire' picks up where 'Gravity' left off. In what is likely a near-future Alexandria, Egypt, our hero Marid Audran is acquiescing to life as the lieutenant of Friedlander Bey, the boss of the Budayeen district. Marid would much prefer to return to his dissolute life as a go-between for the various unsavory personages doing business in the Budayeen, a line of work that supports his drug habit, if not much else. But Friedlander not only has co-opted Marid into being a permanent member of the household, but he has arranged for Marid to become a policeman, no less.
Marid's friends and acquaintances are less than pleased to learn that Marid has 'sold out,' but for his part, Marid is slowly coming to an awareness that his life is trending to more important things than self-indulgence. Friedlander is old and ill, and more and more reliant on Marid to be a troublehshooter. And Friedlander has his troubles, indeed; an uneasy peace with the other boss man in the city, one Reda Abu Adil, is showing strains, with clandestine operations and treacheries coming to light with each passing week.
For Marid, things get complicated with the discovery that people in the Budayeen are being murdered, not for money or spite, but for reasons quite sinister. Marid suspects that Friedlander and Abu Adil know more than they are saying about these murders. A gunman loose in the city may be a source of information, but tracking him down will be dangerous, and Marid isn't cut out to be a hero. But as events close in on him, Marid is going to have to think about being a hero, whether he likes it or not.........
'A Fire in the Sun' is a better novel than its predecessor (to which I gave a Four Star Rating). 'Fire' has better pacing, livelier characterization, and a little less contrivance in terms of the denouement, which settles some questions about Marid's ancestry and the consequences of his alliances with the movers and shakers in the Budayeen. The setting of a cyberpunk North Africa retains its novelty, a place where poverty sits side-by-side with wealth and privilege, and prayers to Allah alternate with jacking in 'mods' that impart skills directly to a user's brain.
At the finish of 'A Fire in the Sun,' I was comfortable with a Five Star Rating, and looking forward to the next volume in this interesting first-generation cyberpunk series.
