Implied Spaces by Walter Jon Williams
reviewed by Rich Horton
The book opens with a swordsman walking across the desert, soon to encounter mysterious priests kidnapping people, and caravan guards led by an ogre. Pure sword and sorcery, right? Not at all, as readers of "Womb of Every World," from last year's SFBC anthology Alien Crimes, will immediately realize. That story, moderately revised, represents a bit more than the first third of this novel.

The Sundering by Walter Jon Williams
reviewed by Rich Horton
In this second of the Dread Empire's Fall, the story of the war as well as the personal stories of Martinez and Sula are advanced but not resolved, as one might expect from a middle book. Both are responsible in part for some further military successes, due to their brilliant tactical minds (and to fruitful collaboration). Their personal relationship takes some steps forward as well, only to be impeded by mutual misunderstandings.

Metropolitan by Walter Jon Williams
reviewed by Donna McMahon
Here, the author creates a bizarre techno-fantasy world -- a sort of a Gotham City planet encrusted in urban sprawl. Magic fuels this world, but the magic (called "plasm") is channeled through wires and conduits, like electricity, and controlled by a giant utility company. Rich people can afford plasm. Poor people can only dream... or get fantastically lucky, like the heroine, and discover an untapped plasm source (a "glory hole") that the Authority doesn't know about.

The Rift by Walter J. Williams
reviewed by Lisa DuMond
The Mississippi Delta is a land that exists on sufferance of the big river. Only because the Mississippi stays behind its levees, follows its locks and spillways, and agrees to overflow onto its batture, is the area safe to live in. It's a complex system, decades in the making, and perfectly adequate to corral the waters -- unless something happens.