Okay, I'm an SF-nut. I confess. I also have been a big fan of gay-SF since I discovered the "gay-books-genre" about 10, maybe 12 years ago ... and have been lusting after Jarrat and Stone since about three days after DEATH'S HEAD arrived in my mailbox. Mel's SF is pretty close to 'Aricia's Ideal' (see my review of the Jarrat/Stone books). But when I got my teeth into the first HELLGATE opus I was *still* surprised. I don't know what I'd been expecting; for some reason I'd been thinking more along the lines of a space-fantasy. But what I read was ultra-realistic from page one to the end, and it's a huge novel. DreamCraft packed it down into a small space, which also minimizes shipping costs. For folks on a budget, that helps a lot. The HELLGATE books have the 'flavor' of an epic, from the very start ... and you gotta love these two characters. Is it me, or are Neil Travers and Curtis Marin a little bit like J and S ?? There's the big dark butch one and the smaller more 'intellectual' one who still kicks butt with the best of 'em. Maybe I'm just starting to recognize MK's 'ideal heroes' after all these years! Criticisms? Lord knows, I'm not one to criticize a Keegan novel (I don't even notice typos, though I realize a lot of habitual proofreaders do). The only thing I found to criticize about HELLGATE #1 is absolutely unavoidable in the book: it's HUGE and the story is COMPLICATED. The novel is AWESOME, but you have to stay wide awake and read the whole thing. MK doesn't repeat himself, and if you skip pages or read while falling asleep, you can miss the details and 'lose the plot.' I solved the whole problem by reading HELLGATE #1 twice, and enjoyed it more the second time around. Cheers to DreamCraft for making it possible for an epic-size story from MK to take place.

'The Rabelais Alliance' is pretty much exactly what you expect from Mel Keegan: a good-size book with handsome heroes, an intricate storyline and no shortage of 'color' ... this time the tapestry the story plays out against is deep space, and it's a 'beat up, dirty' deep space at that. Reminds me a hulluvalot more of ALIEN than any of the squeaky-clean TREK movies! It's big ships, big problems for the human race ... and Keegan pulls it off in style. My verdict on this one: *brilliant.* I liked the cover too. Keegan makes a good point about the GMP covers being rather [juvenile], while his characters are normally about 10 - 15 years older and more mature than anything depicted by the old cover artists. The current artist, Jade (is that a guy or a gal???) seems to have gotten it right. I had a problem with the bookbinding on my copy: some pages came loose during reading — but DreamCraft are aware of the problem and when I emailed about it, Dave told me they'd had troubles with one batch, and had tossed-out a LOT of individual books. A couple got through where some pages were loose (like mine), but they [DreamCraft] are on top of the problem and it won't crop up again. That's good enough for me ... I'm just looking forward to the next one.

My partner got me the book, and as I love science fiction this was for me. I really liked the characters especially Curtis Marin - you felt as if there were lots more of his character to yet unfold. I thought that the Dendra Shemiji organisation was fascinating the way it was written (the resalq background really) and how people function on different levels. I wasn't sure about the Richard Vaurien character - seemed to good to be true somehow. The story line was great, I could not put the book down and have reread it a few times as you do miss things the first time around. The proof reading was excellent with a couple of exceptions. Like a lot of people I enjoyed the relationship unfolding between the two main characters and I do hope it develops further - very descriptive. I am eagerly awaiting Probe - keep writing Mel