Neil Fein's Blog

The Return of Santiago
by Mike Resnick

Mike Resnick's brand of bubblegum space opera has served him well through many books: The Oracle trilogy, Ivory, and the original Santiago, to name a few, often hitting with profound observations or important points when the reader has been lulled into a false state of brain shut-off. This style has allowed Mr. Resnick to bring such concepts as the exploitation of so-called primitive cultures to a popular science-fiction audience. Books such as Paradise, Birthright, and Ivory explore these themes very successfully.

The Return of Santiago is very much a standalone book; I'd not read the original novel in many years, but didn't feel I was missing anything. The story is that of Dante, who takes on the role of the new Orpheus of the Inner Frontier, a revered poet who documented the exploits of larger-than-life bandits and heroes of his world. In this old-west-style future that has been explored and expanded in many of Mike Resnick's books and short stories, Dante has realized that the original Orpheus was great because he had excellent material when writing of the original Santiago, an outlaw and revolutionary against the oppressive Democracy. So Dante, along with a cast of mostly well-drawn characters, set about creating a new Santiago, a new legend to keep the Democracy off their backs. (Oh yeah, it'll also give Dante a big, big story to get his career as the new Orpheus going. Don't say that last bit too loudly...)

Waltzing Matilda, The One-Armed Bandit, and Moby Dick are well-written characters. However, Virgil, Dante's companion, and Silvermane, are an ill-written and vague personalities. This is particularly irksome considering that they're major characters. There are many other supporting players -- Bounty hunters, criminals, lawmen, and "just plain folks" -- who are vaguely drawn but add just enough color to the environment to evoke the "old west" feeling The Return of Santiago is set in. One minor character, Deuteronomy Priest, is a wonderful figure, an amoral-moral shoot-em-up evangelist. "When I convert 'em, they stay converted." I wish we'd seen more of him; this wonderful character just fades away and we're left wondering if the author forgot to tell us something.

I was, to put it mildly, disappointed in this book. Perhaps I'm holding it up to his other works too harshly, but I know that Mike Resnick is capable of so much better than this. Dante's worry that he's just creating Santiago so he'll have something to write about seems to mirror a greater conflict about why this novel was written in the first place. While the settings and characters are gorgeously drawn, and the vista of future history is stunning, the motivations of the characters were suspect throughout the novel. It seems that Dante is able to convince his cohorts a mite too easily to risk their lives and chase after phantoms. The book's ending is also very hard to swallow.

Mike Resnick is an excellent writer, and I found that The Return of Santiago was a great read, and I finished quickly. But it feels a draft or two away from being the finished, polished work Mr. Resnick usually releases.