The Duke of Uranium
John Barnes
290 pages
published in 2002

The Duke of Uranium is a bit of a departure for Barnes. Unlike most of his work, this is a juvenile, a classic "adolescent boy grows up and does good" story. It also lacks a great deal of the cynicism and pessimism of much of his other work. The Duke of Uranium is the first of a series; so far two more novels in it have been published, which are somewhat darker in nature. If The Duke of Uranium is a novel you could recommend to your 12 year old niece or nephew, the others would have their parents object...

Seeing as how this is a juvenile sf adventure story, there is bound to be an obligatory Heinlein reference on the backcover, which indeed there is, but this book is also compared to Harry Harrison. This I found a little odd, as it reads nothing like a Harrison novel nor is Harrison the first writer you think of when talking about sf juveniles. But hey, that's marketing for you.

The plot is reasonably straight forward. Jak Jinnaka is not a particularly bright high school student in the Hive, a gigantic spacestation and one of the major powers in the 36th century Solar System. He is best friends with Dujuk, a panth, a neohuman species bred more for atlethicism then intelligence. Jak also has a girlfriend, Sesh and the trouble starts when she is kidnapped by parties unknown. At that point Jak learns two new and shocking things about her and himself. First, Sesh is a princess from one of the more influential kingdoms of the Aerie, the other gigantic spacestation in the Solar System and second, he himself has been trained from childhood as a secret agent by his uncle. Which means that he, along with his friend has to go rescue Sesh. According to his uncle this should be relatively straight forward, but this turns out to be not so. As if you expected anything else.

The plot has the usual twists and turns and of course Jak has to do some growing up to do before he is able to rescue the princess. Nothing you probably haven't seen before, but the story moves quickly enough and Barnes writes engagingly enough for this not to matter. John Barnes has always had a good imagination and the world he has created this time is interesting and feels real. It has more depth than is needed for the story, much of which I have no doubt of will be explored in later novels in the series. There are already quite a few hints here that things are not always as they seem at first glance.

What I like most about this is that this is a classic science fiction juvenile story without being oldfashioned. On the strength of this, one could call Barnes the 21st century Heinlein, as he has the same knack as Heinlein did of both creating a believable and interesting world and a good story to go with it. Recommended for anybody who likes a good oldfashioned adventure story.