What do ya mean, 'Book One'???

I knew something was up when things weren't quite coming to a tidy conclusion toward the end of "The Traveler," the current hot libertarian novel by John Twelve Hawks. "Wow, Self, this is a lot of loose ends to leave hanging in a 456-page book," I said to myself.

I'm more naive than I care to admit. It didn't begin to dawn on me until there were two or three pages left that I was being set up to buy the sequel. Sure enough, at the bottom of Page 456 is the clincher: "The End -- Book One of the Fourth Realm."

Damn. I have avoided trilogies and massive series books like the plague. Everybody thinks they can write the next "Lord of the Rings" or Foundation or Dune books. Well, kids, a Tolkien or Asimov or Herbert doesn't come along that often, and stories worth sustaining over three or more books are pretty rare.

By making "The Traveler" the first book in a series, Twelve Hawks and Doubleday up the ante on whether I recommend it. So here's the bottom line: Absolutely, this is a nice summer read that tells a compelling story and sounds important alarms about where we're going as a culture. But he should have added 100-150 pages and finished the story, because he did not make me care enough about these characters to want to read 900 more pages about them (assuming we're talking at least three books).

That's a shame, too, because he DID make me care enough that I'm glad I spent 456 pages with them, and I want to know a few things about what happens next. So all told, I'd recommend the book with a warning that you won't find out the answers to a few key mysteries. And maybe after a few days, I'll even concede that the mysteries are intriguing enough to buy another book or two. For now I'm too disappointed about the "to be continued" nature of the structure.

Don't get me wrong, it's not a cliffhanger; the book comes to a fairly satisfying conclusion. But I felt the story building to a climax, and rather than giving you a payoff, it suddenly (to me) veers into fuzziness. And I feel a little cheated not knowing ahead of time that I was not reading a self-contained book.

I like a book that lets you think about what happens next and wish for more; heck, I grew up reading comic books and paperback reprints of pulp novels, so I obviously love continuing adventures. But tell me what I'm in for; don't spring it on me on Page 456.

Does "The Traveler" stand up next to other action/science fiction/cautionary tales about the very near future? Absolutely. Go buy it and read it. But does it live up to the standards set by Foundation and Empire and Dune and Frodo Baggins? Absolutely not. Be warned! It's very, very good; it's just not THAT good.

Now. The book is packed with frightening images of how the Vast Machine has seized many of our freedoms and is taking aim on the rest of them. More on that another time; for now, I must leave and report to my work station.