Very Hard Choices

According to Wikipedia this is the last book Spider has written and it came out in 2008. Think about that for a minute. One of the best sf writers ever (he's won the John W. Campbell award for best new writer, three Hugos and one Nebula) who published almost one book a year from 1976 to 2008 in addition to short stories and newspaper columns, has produced nothing in almost a decade. You have to know that something serious derailed his writing train. It was grief--for his wife, his daughter, his father--who died within 4 years of each other and were ill for some time before their deaths. On January 26, 2015 Spider wrote in his online diary about the previous December when his daughter and then his father died. After his father's funeral show more his sister proposed a walk in a nearby park and Spider went:
And within only a few hundred meters, I slowly became aware that I was swinging along like a walkin’ fool, with a glide in my stride and a cut in my strut, coverin’ ground. The breeze was bracing. I caught myself humming under my breath. How odd. It was as though some sort of weight had been lifted from me….

Once I noticed it, I understood at once what it was. For the first time in what felt like forever…nobody I loved was dying.

For something like six years, I’d had alarm bells going off in my head every minute of every day. Loud ones, insistent ones, urgent ones. “One you love is in mortal danger. You must save them. Or at least avenge them.” Of course, neither was possible. But that didn’t make the alarm bells go silent, not for a minute.

Now the silence in my head was wonderful. There was room in my skull for music again. I was off-duty.

Let's hope that there will also be room in his skull for some more stories.

This book is a continuation of Very Bad Deaths featuring the same cast of characters as that book (Russell, Zandor and Nika) with the addition of Russell's son Jesse. Nika had a cousin look up information about Zandor and that rang alarm bells somewhere. A CIA agent came to Vancouver, found Nika and put a bug on her car which she immediately drove to see Russell on Heron Island where Russell was just enjoying a long overdue visit from Jesse. Jesse noticed the bug and the three of them try to figure out what to do about this mess. Of course, they have to bring the telepath Zandor into the equation. The ending is quite different from the end of Very Hard Choices and it is almost as if Spider was able to foresee the future. It's a little spooky to read in this Trump era.

It is interesting to me that the narrator, Russell, is a widower having lost his beloved wife Susan to cancer. And yet, from all I've read about Jeanne's illness and death it wasn't diagnosed until 2009, well after Very Bad Deaths and at least a year after Very Hard Choices. Maybe Spider is the telepath here? show less

This book is more a mystery with fat tele-path, aging writer, a hot looking cop, and spy, than a science fiction story. As a mystery the book kept me interested despite some flaws.If you are looking for a story where the tech is an important part of the story go elsewhere. What this book is a political statement about the preventing un-seen forces from engineering the decline of America. This is an unkind poke at conservative politics and the praise of 6o's era liberalism.

This is the second book in a trilogy but was unaware of this when I got this book. Robinson takes pains to bring the reader up to speed.

Nicely done suspense/mystery with only a bit of SF thrown in. The plotting was strong, the characters believable and sympathetic. If you've read any other Robinson, you will recognize his tropes. He seems to have let go of some of the cleverness that was becoming, to my eyes anyway, tired in his last few books. I do wish his publishers would get him some new blurbs- these are the exact same ones that have been on his books since the 80s.
Worth a read if you are a fan.

A present-day story in which the odd heroes of Very Bad Deaths realize that telepathic Sudie has been discovered and someone is seeking him by tracking Russell Walker, who is busy trying to reconnect with his estranged son, and Canadian cop Nika. The writing style is in Spider Robinson's own entertaining and thought-provoking voice. Lots of observations and informative tidbits sprinkled throughout. Spider is the best.

I had no idea this was part of a series until I read other reviews here—and I just checked over the book and there is no indication that is #2 in any series. Weird.

I liked this. But now that I know it's #2, if I had read #1, I probably would have been bored by the recounting of what I now know happened in #1. It's a good stand-alone story—and disturbing. The whole bit about the telepath's understanding of what happens after death...... shivers.

I wasn't quite as impressed by this one as by #1 in the series, but it was still a fun read, with some interesting political content toward the end. I would definitely read a #3 if one gets written; it ends with an excellent set-up for such a thing. Plus, it's nice sometimes to read about a protagonist who is not a beautiful, overly-fit 20-year-old chick with supernatural powers! (OK, I have a guilty love of such things...)

Another entertaining book by Robinson. Again, the political agenda gets old in places. The ending on this one was genuine surprise. The flashbacks are some of my favorite parts, and the humor is great.