I’ve been digging this story from chapter one, and have read the eBook.

It’s generally seen as a "guy book".  I mean, the main characters are a street punk three mosqueteros who fight gamecocks, druggy/drunky, stab and shoot people when it seems to call for it, and are partly using the staggering power of transporting between planets to chase otherworldly poontang.

Fine with me, I read a bit of "guy lit".  (And "chicklit" makes me ill.)  But what got me was how much I enjoyed the female characters. They tend to be highly female, but also capable of seizing and using power, including power over men.

Libertad (MC Ben Ochoa’s mama) is the closest to a tranditional female character:  "Earth mother" in senses that take on greater depth in the context of Ben’s father NOT being an Earthling, she could be seen as a stock Amerindian new age healer.  But her wisdom goes far beyond that and we learn that she’s been offplanet herself.  When might be out there smuggling intergalactic and schooling to run the world, but when the chips hit the table, he goes to Mom for advice and she gives great counsel.

Erin (Ben’s main squeeze and obviously main event, despite some derails)  would also be easy to bag at first: blueblood Yankee society girl heading for a useless Yale degree and sorry marriage.  But she doesn’t shy away when she see’s Ben’s pal cut the guts out of her ex-boyfriend (slash steroidmonster rapist) and doesn’t flip when she finds out Earth is a backwater with a totally engineered past that flies in the face of all her values.  And when it comes time for unconditional love to counter family ties, or to pick up a gun and stand shoulder to shoulder, she’s way there.  Not to mention pretty funny.

If there is a poster girl for male fantasy in this thing it would be Bambina (naked teen waif scooped off a ET beach by the boyz and brought into the business).  She first shows up naked and with a vocabulary of under 100 words.  Her beauty creates instant bonding for one of Ben’s pals and they take her with them.  She gets "socialized" by Erin (after she gets over being pissed at Ben for nailing Bambina) in a hilarious scene.  And when she becomes a smuggler, she does it up with every button loose and every buckle swashed.  By the end she takes a very strong stance against two pretty unopposable men.

Then there’s Cielo (Ben’s pre-teen sister)  Little sweety singing in the subway in Mexico City.  Until and attempted assault by cops leads her into the dorm (and bed) of a leftist student.  She takes to rebellion and Marx with vigor and is about as inflexible a character as any in the book.

So, it’s a book mostly about doodz, but the girlz don’t have to take back seat.  This is a fun book that actually provokes thought.

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