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A review by johnayliff
The Centauri Device by M. John Harrison
5.0
John Truck feels like the archetype for every low-life space freighter captain to hang around seedy spaceport bars looking for the next semi-legal job to keep his head above water. He's a passive protagonist, stumbling from encounter to encounter as he is fought over by the setting's major factions, who value him only for his genetics as the last half-Centauran. While the Centauri Device itself is a classic sf macguffin, it is John Truck himself who is the macguffin for most of the book.
The world presented in the novel is bleak and depressing, and seeing the world through the eyes of a character like John Truck helps the world to come into focus in a way that the eyes of another character could not. The grimness of the human-dominated galaxy is enhanced by a few snatches of space-operatic wonder, such as the fantastic alien ships found abandoned by one of the factions, with the implication that the grim human world has destroyed a galaxy of alien beauty.
The prose style is not always easy to read but is rewarding.
The world presented in the novel is bleak and depressing, and seeing the world through the eyes of a character like John Truck helps the world to come into focus in a way that the eyes of another character could not. The grimness of the human-dominated galaxy is enhanced by a few snatches of space-operatic wonder, such as the fantastic alien ships found abandoned by one of the factions, with the implication that the grim human world has destroyed a galaxy of alien beauty.
The prose style is not always easy to read but is rewarding.