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Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN num: 9780765319203
ISBN number: 0765319209
Label: Tor Books
Manufacturer: Tor Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: August 19, 2008
Publishing house: Tor Books
Release Date: August 19, 2008
Sale Popularity Level: 150470
Studio: Tor Books
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Product Description:
Welcome to Chilo, a planet with corrosive rain, crushing pressure, and deadly heat. Fortunately, fourteen-year-old Timas lives in one of the domed cities that float 100,000 feet above the surface, circling near the edge of a monstrous perpetual storm. Above the acidic clouds the temperature and pressure are normal. But to make a living, Timas like many other young men, is lowered to the surface in an armored suit to scavenge what he can.
Timas’s life is turned upside down when a strange man crash lands on the city. The newcomer is fleeing an alien intelligence intent on invading the planet and discovering the secret hidden deep inside the perpetual storm—a secret that could lead to interplanetary war.
As the invaded cities fall silent one by one, Chilo’s citizens must race against time to stop the enemy. And Timas will find out what kind of man he has become in the harsh conditions of Chilo’s surface.
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Rated by buyers 
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The characters in "Sly Mongoose" form a phalanx of space opera cliches, moving through the story exactly as you'd expect them to. The troubled teen, the invincible warrior, the manipulative alien, the horde of zombies, the oddball steampunk inventor ... all are threadbare one-dimensional archetypes.
I enjoy mindless pulp as much as the subsequent man, but Mongoose is just so stylistically bland that I'm afraid I can't recommend it.
Rated by buyers 
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An intense debate over how to deal with illegal aliens... a virus corrupting the results of electronic voting... a runaway greenhouse effect... This would sound like something out of current headlines, if not for the zombies. Everything is better with zombies.
Buckell returns to the universe of his previous 2 novels and humanity is still misplacing it's resentment toward its (now former) alien overlords by finding new and exciting ways of killing each other. The setting is what initially sets this book apart from your average adventure filled science fiction yarn. The caustic Venus like atmosphere of Chilo offers us a dizzying array of floating cities, air ships, clockwork dragons, but the people that choose to live on Chilo give the story its soul.
If you've read the Crystal rain, you'll recognize the Azteca. If you've read Ragamuffin you'll recognize the Consensus as an extrapolation of democracy enabled by the Lamina technology. If you've read either, you'll love seeing Pepper in action. If this is the very first book you read by Buckell, it'll definitely entice you to read the previous books.
Rated by buyers -
Space zombies. Floating cities. And Pepper leaping out of a spaceship and riding a heatshield down, sans parachute. What else do I really need to say about this one?
Sly Mongoose is Tobias Buckell's third novel, set in the same universe as Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin, but Pepper is the only character from the earlier books. As with Ragamuffin, this isn't a direct sequel, though it does continue the larger story Buckell is creating about humans struggling to survive and find their place as they discover just how dangerous a place this universe can be.
Sly Mongoose is set primarily on the planet of Chilo, a loosely Venus-like planet with crushing gravity, a corrosive atmosphere ... generally not a pleasant place to live. The inhabitants live in floating cities, descending to the surface to maintain the outdated and unreliable mining equipment. It's a hard life, and when Pepper drops in, it gets a lot harder. The Swarm (space zombies!) is coming, searching for a secret hidden on Chilo's surface, and they're prepared to kill anyone and everyone in their way.
Buckell does a lot of cool things in this book. For starters, Chilo's inhabitants are the descendants of the Azteca from Crystal Rain. One complaint I had about Crystal Rain was that the Aztecs came across as fairly straightforward villains without as much depth as I wanted. Sly Mongoose develops them into fully fleshed out people, still struggling to live down the shame of their ancestors' actions back on New Anegada.
Sly Mongoose leaves me curious where Buckell is going with this series. He's setting up a very dangerous and violent universe, one in which humanity will either need to unite and work together, or face extinction. Behind the obvious threat of the Swarm lies another enemy, and further in the shadows an even larger threat could be lurking.
The young miner Timas is a good character, but Pepper steals the book. Pepper is a highly practical, survival-oriented warrior. He's an interesting one ... long-lived, and having survived enough wars to warp any man. There are times he seems to be running on automatic, more machine than human, and throughout the book you see Timas and others trying to break through to that kernel of humanity. Sometimes they seem to reach him. Other times, Pepper just lets them think so, because it suits Pepper's plans at that particular moment. Definitely not a nice man, but a fascinating one, and a useful guy to have around in a war.
Overall, I'd say this is the best of the three books, an action-filled page-turner that left me eager to read number four.
Rated by buyers -
Sly Mongoose is set several generations after Ragamuffin, and our old friend Pepper is back in the middle of the latest crisis. As always the alien machinery inside of him has caused him to outlast and outlive everyone around him, so he's the only character you'll remember from previous books. The descendants of the Azteca fled New Anegada and their alien masters, and now live in floating cities set about a deadly planet called Chilo.
One of the things I love about Buckell's work is that his books in this series have enough similarity of style, exploration, themes, etc. (not to mention the fantastic character of Pepper!) to satisfy someone who's looking for more of 'the same'. However, each one is also quite different from the previous books, so you certainly won't feel bored with the material! Each book takes place some time after the previous one, in this case several generations later. Each book explores a different part of the universe, although at the same time it takes on the consequences of previous plots. So there's a ton of new material while also a few familiar threads to hold onto. This also means that the books can stand alone, although you'll have an easier time following some things if you know what came before.
The characters are complex and interesting. As usual it could be argued that Pepper is actually not the main character, although perhaps he is more so in Sly Mongoose than in the last two books. This is a great approach, because Pepper's certainly not your standard hero, nor even your standard anti-hero, and it's often both useful and important to see events through other people's eyes as well.
In many ways Buckell's books hearken back to an earlier style of hard SF that drops you straight into highly alien situations and lets you absorb it all, rather than starting from something familiar. They also contain a strong element of exploration with regard to alien sentience, societal and governmental structures, and so on. Most refreshingly, he explores all sorts of positive and negative aspects of these things without holding up a sharp agenda. It's writing that makes you think, not writing that preaches. He also writes with an incredibly unique flavor that I've not seen in any other author's books, so if you're looking for something new, his books are a great bet!
Rated by buyers -
The surface of Chilio is so hostile with its perpetual storms it is deadly to humans. Aztec descendents fled enslavement by aliens on New Anegada to settle on this lethal orb, but built domed cities floating high in the atmosphere above the deadly planet in order to avoid the excessive temperatures, the CRYSTAL RAIN and the crushing atmospheric pressure.
However, over time the technology has become lost, the cities in the sky decaying rapidly, and the residents unable to pay for infrastructure repair or spare parts of the machines that keep them alive. One of the floating towns Yatapek survives mostly due to a mining machine working the surface underneath the city; special physically apropos young men serve as mechanics as the ground suits needed to survive limit who can do the job. Fourteen years old repairman Timas is working on the surface when he sees an alien; he leaves his work to prove his startling discovery. Suddenly disaster strikes Yatapek and the other floating cities as invaders have arrived from space. Pepper, who has lived here decades past his peers as his insides are filled with alien gizmos that have kept him alive long after others he knew died (see RAGAMUFFIN) finds himself helping the people of Chilio in a war they cannot win, but to lose means extinction.
Letting time refresh the return to Chilio, Tobias S. Buckell provides an exhilarating outer space science fiction thriller that starts off with action as Pepper wearing a heat shield dives through the lethal atmosphere to the surface and never slows down until the final confrontation. The story line is fast-paced, but it is the cast who makes the plot entertaining. Fans will expect that of Pepper, but Timas makes the tale move briskly as the audience will believe he and the other mechanics are real and in turn that affirms the hostile conditions. Readers will relish SLY MONGOOSE as war has come to a forgotten unforgiving planet, but to know why requires reading about a planet with a humongous everlasting tempest (worse than that on Jupiter).
Harriet Klausner
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