R.M. Meluch

Well, it's been a while -- not that I've stopped reading! But sometimes I pass through a non-fiction phase (I need to: I have a whole stack of non-fiction books waiting for my attention, some of which have been waiting since the Christmas before last! The trouble is, so many of them are very fat, and getting through a fat tome on something you want to know more about is not in any way like galloping through a nice fat fantasy.). And I don't by any means want to mention all the fiction I read -- only the really good ones.

The ones I want to comment on today fall into the category of old friends. I have a lot of old friends -- by and large, I don't buy books unless I'm going to read them repeatedly (that still leaves far too many on my shelves!). Anyway, I was browsing my bookshelves a week or so ago, looking for something to fit my mood, and I happened on Jerusalem Fire by R.M. Meluch.

I don't know how many times I've read this book, but it was great to revisit it. And then I had to go through all my other books by the same author: Wind Dancers, and its sequel Wind Child, and Sovereign. Which was all very enjoyable, though Jerusalem Fire, for no clear reason, is my favorite.

The books are slim (well, standard paperback -- this was before the fetish with fat books), science fiction, and written in the early 80s. They invent interesting premises and species, but I think the reason I like them so much is that (unusually for science fiction) they're really character studies -- Jerusalem Fire and Sovereign more than the other two.

Here's the opening to Jerusalem Fire:

The captain was a notorious rebel runner. He was called Alihahd. This was his last run.
He had no real name, only a Chesite word, alihahd, which meant "he left." He had no country, no planet, though several including Chesa claimed him. To most of the known galaxy he was a legend without a face, and to the rest a face without a name.

Jerusalem Fire is the story of this man, and of another man, who is trying very hard to forget he's human. They're great characters, and I like Meluch's voice.

I was interested to see, on investigating the matter, that Meluch, after a long hiatus, started writing again. I don't know anything about her more recent books, but I look forward to finding out. You can read about them at her website at http://www.rmmeluch.com/