Op een warme zomernacht wordt in een arbeidersbuurt van Boston een gezin vermoord. Eén meisje overleeft het drama. De vader - en mogelijke verdachte - vecht voor zijn leven op de intensive care. Rechercheur D.D. Warren weet één ding zeker: er is meer aan de hand. Danielle Burton is een toegewijde verpleegster die hulp biedt aan gewelddadige kinderen op een gesloten psychiatrische afdeling. Ze wordt achtervolgd door een familietragedie die bijna vijfentwintig jaar geleden haar leven verwoestte. Wanneer D.D. Warren de psychiatrische inrichting bezoekt, beseft Danielle dat haar nachtmerrie opnieuw is begonnen. Want zij vraagt zich nog steeds af: waarom heeft haar vader háár leven gespaard?

About the Author

James Alan Gardner is a graduate of the Clarion West Fiction Writers Workshop, and has published numerous works of short fiction in leading genre publications. He is the author of the novel Expendable. A Grand Prize winner of the Writers of the Future contest, he lives with his family in Canada.

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From Publishers Weekly

Nebula Award nominee Gardner (Expendable) gives a less-than-stellar performance with this silly look at the future of sex roles. In the 25th century, teenage Fullin, along with his lover, Cappie, and the other villagers of Tober Cove, enjoy the right of selecting what gender they will be for their adult lives: the "Commitment Hour" of the title, is the night when the two must make the big decision. Although Gardner lacks the finesse of Le Guin's anthropological SF, he packs his story with intriguing characters and numerous plot twists to compensate. But a visiting anthropologist, a murder, even the discovery that Fullin's mother is a hermaphrodite, do not add up to a compelling or complete novel. A convoluted climax, in which Fullin discovers the real origin of Cove's society, is just too expository and messy to supply any satisfying emotional payoff or meaningful message about gender and society.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Fullin is a young musician nearing his twentieth birthday, when all Tubor Cove youngsters must decide their sex, even if they are plainly male, female, or a despised "Neut." If a male decides he is to be female, then at "commitment hour," he disappears into a sort of incubator known as "Bird House" and, in due course, his female half emerges. It is a deeply religious moment, and the citizens of Tubor Cove have formed a kind of New Age cult around it. Commitment hour didn't originally have anything to do with religion, however, and after an outcast discovers the secret and turns murderous, Fullin and Tubor Cove have to make some basic changes. Rather a thin concept to support an entire novel, though Fullin is appealing. John Mort

Grendel is a beautiful and heartbreaking modern retelling of the Beowulf epic from the point of view of the monster, Grendel, the villain of the 8th-century Anglo-Saxon epic. This book benefits from both of Gardner's careers: in addition to his work as a novelist, Gardner was a noted professor of medieval literature and a scholar of ancient languages.

Amazon.com Review

Edward York is an illegal clone, genetically engineered for perfection--but something went wrong. His twin sister, Ambassador Samantha York, is a gorgeous genius, but the physically perfect Edward is condemned by his faulty brain to service in the human Navy's Outward Fleet Explorer Corps, a collection of misfits who call themselves the Expendables, and with good reason. After Edward fails to save his sister's life on the war-torn planet Troyen, he is sent away on a Navy starship in which all other crew and passengers die in the same instant, leaving Edward alone--and trapped with unknown, destructive nanotechnology. If that isn't trouble enough, his fate is mysteriously tied to that of Troyen's native race, the Mandasar, in a complex interstellar web of conspiracy and treachery. And his only allies may be five young Mandasar; a human-alien symbiont with motives of her own; and the most infamous Expendable in the Corps, the hated Admiral Festina Ramos.

In addition to Hunted, James Alan Gardner has written two previous novels featuring Festina Ramos, Expendable and Vigilant; his novel Commitment Hour is set in the same universe. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

The latest title in Gardner's loosely linked League of Peoples series (Expendable; Vigilant) brings back a few familiar characters but focuses on Edward York, the son of Admiral Alexander York. Edward's secret is that he and his sister were genetically engineered before birth to be perfect. Unfortunately, something went awry, and Edward is a bit slow intellectually, so his father secures him a position in the Explorer Corps, the branch responsible for contacting new life forms. The catch is that Explorers (or Expendables) often die in the process. Despite his handicap, Edward manages to figure things out in his own way, as he becomes enmeshed in a civil war on Troyen, a planet with a long and complicated political and social history. Gardner's plot is rewardingly complex as well, bringing in elements and characters from his previous books, but his wry dialogue and engaging characters propel the narrative. Edward turns out to have some surprising abilities, which enable him to charm both humans and the large, lobster-like natives of Troyen and, when he learns the truth about those he's cared for, to deal with the consequences. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.