SILENT WAR

The best book in Bova's series, this deals with a variety of characters in the near future, when man has partially colonized the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter for the purpose of mining. Our hero is a former space pilot named Pancho Lane, now a corporate giant who dukes it out (so to speak) with the rich and ruthless tycoon, Martin Humphries, and, mostly unknowingly, a Japanese conglomerate led by the Yamagata family. There are various levels of character development here, as well as Bova's knowledgeable scientific speculations. The readers do uniformly well, though Producer Stefan Rudnicki, who modestly omits himself from the primary cast members, sometimes drops his low voice toward inaudibility. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 06]