This was one of the more interesting books, since I saw the movie before I knew the book existed. I felt that it was much better, things were detailed more and it really got into the characters. I think it even resolved the part in the cliffhanger episode with Buck and his teacher. I haven't read it in a while so I'm not positive. Anyway, it's definately worth buying.

This book finally shows us the conclusion to the last episode of the TV series. Unfortunatly, the TV series left us hanging with it's last show. What happened to George's family after they inhaled the poison? That was the question left on the fans minds at the end of the series? Why was the show ended, and the last story never resolved? Although we may never know the true answer to the second question, we can now find out the answer to the first. This book gives us a detailed account of the last episode, AND the conclusion we all wanted. Even though we eventually saw the episode, and a few new movies, this book is in my opinion superior to the movie. If you can find a copy of this book, or any of the others, grab it! You will not be sorry.

It deserves to be read. It is an ambitious experiment: can a novel reproduce a videogame? Jeter succeeded in doing that. The novel is a videogame. But it is a videogame on paper, peopled by characters with a soul and a (sometime) questioning mind (one of these is Sai). The apparent plot is a frantic adventure in a surrealistic virtual world whose shape is a scandal for reason. But here and there Jeter suggested that things aren't exactly what they seem (he was a friend of Philip K. Dick, after all), and there's more in this novel than the breathless quest of Ny Axxter in a grotesque cyberworld (maybe the ultimate cyberworld). Basically it is a satire of many aspects of the videogame imagery/subculture, and a discussion of its covert ideology. Not as food as other novels by the same author, Dr. Adder and The Glass Hammer, but a novel worth reading. And subtly funny most of the time. 'Tis a pity it's out of print!

Jeter invented a truely wonderful world for this novel. The setting is a huge, cylindrical building that towers above the earth. Most of society exists inside the building but those who are outside society, on the edge, live on the outside of the building, on the "Vertical".

The novel's protagonist, Ny Axxter lives on this wall and tries to make a living as a freelance artist working with video and graffex. One day, he has what appears to be a stroke of good fortune and he thinks that he is on the verge of making it into the big time as a major artist.

At this point, his world starts to fall to pieces and he discovers that reality is not what he, and everyone else thought and that the major players in his world now want him out of the way.

While many parts of the world are unexplained, Jeter throws in enough in the way of technical details to make this hard SF and not fantasy. The writing style is very sharp.

Jeter is regarded by many as an heir to the mantle of the great P.K.Dick and this book is worthy of that regard. I always think that a sign of good writing is the quality of the pictures inside my head as I read and, on the measure, this was very good indeed.

Farewell Horizontal is a gripping read and I highly recommended it.

If you only read one K.W. Jeter book then you are missing out on some of the most significant science fiction of the last twenty five years. Still, this is the one to read if one is your ambition. Astounding ideas, breathless surgical execution and the very best gusto an amateur can bring to the field, here wrapped in one pocket-sized package by a true professional. How many authors could pull off a motorcycle chase up the side of a building and still make you want to read more? Simply marvellous.

The Glass Hammer is a completely freaked out story about a guywho is trying to break out of a quasi Religious/political web in hiscar. Think of Mad Max or Death Race 2000, but written by someone who is very paranoid and complicated

Not having been real impressed with Jeter's take on Blade Runner, it was almost amazing that I gave The Glass Hammer a try. It was a difficult book to begin reading, and I almost gave up. But it paid off in the end. The Glass Hammer is undoubtably one of my favorite books of all time. Having just finished it -- again -- I felt compelled to let others know that if you can find this book, read it. The first 30-40 pages of it are a difficult read. Jeter writes a story about a man, Schuyler, who races across the Arizona desert night amid hailing laser missiles to deliver illegal computer chips to European buyers. He has become a minor celebrity by apparently being the father of the second coming of God. A production company is doing a bio of Schuyler and the story is writen as part present and part past, told as both video images and memories. Difficult to follow at first, but once you get into the flow, the story becomes engrossing, and the plot even more intricate. Well worth reading, even if you are not a fan of the genre.

This book had the potential to be one of my favorite books in the first 50 pages - but then it got to be more funny than scary. I still enjoyed it, but it just wasn't 'dark' enough. The use of slang from the future made it kind of ridiculous and the fact that the book is really just one continuous chase scene with a helpless hero is pretty absurd too.

You'll need to stretch your imagination quite a bit on some of the ideas but all in all it was fun. Jeter is very creative and original, this is kind of a funny version of _The Anubis Gates_ and also similar to Gaiman's _Neverwhere_ and _The Physiognomy_ from Jeffrey Ford.

This is a great book. Very fun to read. If you like James P. Blaylock, this is way better than Homuculus. Just read it. Dane

I'm a guy from Holland and in the early nineties I got my first exposure to the horrorgenre via countless horrormovies on videotape and my local comicbook store which imported FANGORIA magazine.

I have to mention both in this review. First because FANGORIA wasn't that flattering in it's review of this book and second 'cause THE NIGHT MAN just feels to me like a lot of the horrorvideos from that time (think the Freddy Krueger and Jason films and more obscure gems like THE HITCHER and MAD JAKE).

I have to disagree with FANGORIA though (sorry Dave Kuehls). I admit THE NIGHT MAN has a somewhat average setting and there is some moralising (I read somewhere Jeter used to work with troubled youths himself) but the parts with the fantom avenger and his black car are just so cool and everything just ties up real good in the end.

The plot is simple (An abused kid has his revenge on those who pestered him, and his life somehow gets entangled with that of an aspiring writer slash nightguard) but there's enough horror in the parts with the abandoned drive-inn and (once again) the avenger to keep a horror buff like me interested. It's also a fairly short read which I finished in a day (another pluspoint in my book).

I haven't read Jeters other books (The rumor is DARK SEEKER and SOUL EATER are better) but this is entertaining in it's own right.
It's just too bad Jeter abandoned the horrorgenre to become a franchise writer for the likes of STAR TREK (yuck!).

Jeter, known now for novelisations of Star Trek stuff and for his Philip K. Dick ties, wrote some pretty good horror novels. DARK SEEKER is another one. This book, written while Jeter was working nights at some sort of juvenile correctional facility, deals with both child abuse and adult male violence in a reasonably thought-provoking and sympathetic way. It encapsulates many of Jeter's obsessive concerns -- child abuse, troubled men uncertain of their identities, and so forth -- and may -- I don't know -- include some bits of autobiography (since one of his protagonists in the novel is working at a job identical to the one Jeter was doing at the time). See my review of DARK SEEKER for more on Jeter, and my notes on MANTIS for a bit of a warning -- Jeter can fall in love with the violence he depicts, and may not be healthy reading... I actually thought his horror novels were much more interesting and unique than his forays into SF, though they're out of print now and the observation may be irrelevant...

This book was the excellent tale of a young boy who was kicked around his whole life and then in one instant vengence was his. THE VENGENCE OF THE NIGHT MAN!!! An emotionally-provocative story very well written.

Before KW Jeter turned to novelising DEEP SPACE NINE and such, he'd built up quite a cult following. Part of this -- in regard, specifically, to the novel DR. ADDER -- had to do with his associations with Philip K. Dick -- but Jeter really had his own voice and concerns. His novels from the time of DARK SEEKER (including MANTIS, THE SOUL EATER, and THE NIGHT MAN) are rather interesting psychological horror stories that often focus around buried rage, child abuse, and male protagonists who are barely able to remain stable, being tempted by various forces, both inner and outer, into darkness and self-destruction. Themes of homelessness and the perceptions of people beaten outside of the social structure also tend to arise... As his troubled heroes slide, their sense of what is or can be real and of the solidity of their own identity often gets grievously challenged. Some of these novels, like MANTIS, carry their ugliness too far into what amounts to self-indulgent misogyny and chaos; the most interesting of them, however, is DARK SEEKER. If nothing else, it has a BRILLIANT premise. It posits the existence of a hippie cult based around the use of a psychedelic drug that a) unites the users in a shared, telepathic psychosis and b) involves hallucinatory visits by dark, evil forces that goad the users on to do horrific things. The cult was disbanded years ago, after members were implicated in murder (reminiscent of the Manson clan). The protagonist of the novel is a survivor of the group; he is able to lead a normal life, by medicating himself daily with antipsychotics and so forth, but constantly misses the intensity of his past experiences. He also has memories of murder that other people, also using the drug, committed, and is disturbed by knowing on some primal level that the act felt good... He has to continually protect himself against the possiblity that the cult will again surface into his life to tempt him, which, of course, it eventually does... At his best, Jeter questions and deconstructs male attractions to violence and darkness, linking them to severe abuse (he was working in a reform-school type situation, on the night shift, when he wrote some of these -- notably also THE NIGHT MAN, which is also a pretty good book). At his worst, he romanticizes the brutality and revels in it. It's been a few years since I read DARK SEEKER -- but I'd recommend it, tentatively, based on how much I liked it at the time (when I was a moody, troubled adolescent -- possibly Jeter's ideal audience, which I know isn't really a compliment). Can't say much about his recent work, though -- haven't read it.

This book had the potential to be one of my favorite books in the first 50 pages - but then it got to be more funny than scary. I still enjoyed it, but it just wasn't 'dark' enough. The use of slang from the future made it kind of ridiculous and the fact that the book is really just one continuous chase scene with a helpless hero is pretty absurd too.

You'll need to stretch your imagination quite a bit on some of the ideas but all in all it was fun. Jeter is very creative and original, this is kind of a funny version of _The Anubis Gates_ and also similar to Gaiman's _Neverwhere_ and _The Physiognomy_ from Jeffrey Ford.

K.W. Jeter's "Infernal Devices" was a very good book, and I therefore presumed that "Dr. Adder" would be, too. I was very much mistaken.

I'm aware that "Dr. Adder" is regarded as some sort of alternative classic, but I really can't imagine why; it's one of the most "so what?" books I've ever read. We're not given any reason to particularly care about the two-dimensional title character (who comes across as a misogynist, a homophobe, and an overall bigot against anyone who doesn't want to live the way he does, all traits that are customarily associated with the very "moral forces" that oppose him), we almost never see the ONE-dimensional villain (in the end it's revealed the villain is an A.I., but since we knew almost nothing about him in the first place, the revelation falls flat and his "defeat" flatter yet), and we get only a surface view of the futuristic society and no clue as to what motivates its citizens. Extraneous concepts are introduced and then abandoned, taking up space that could have better been used to make the main setting more real.

I also really have to say that the book's depiction of women is contemptible. Almost every female character is either a prostitute or a drugged drone, and that's only part of the general flatness of the future depicted here. There's little explanation for why Dr. Adder would be a "hero figure" for surgically altering prostitutes to better please their clientele because, frankly, the book doesn't depict prostitution in a positive light (perhaps this isn't supposed to matter since we get almost no serious look at the people who oppose it), and the notion that women should re-make themselves in order to better service men isn't a good one. Even a half-hearted attempt to explain why, in this future, prostitution is now something that young women would actually ASPIRE to (instead of the last resort that it usually is) would've helped tremendously.

In addition, while I don't have a problem with "foul language" per se, I felt the author was overusing it for no real reason but shock value, and IMHO overuse of such language isn't "mature," it's entirely the opposite. It doesn't matter what sort of language or images are used if nothing ever gets SAID.

Maybe my failure to get much out of the book stems from a misunderstanding of what "cyberpunk" is supposed to be; maybe I looked at it from the wrong perspective. Maybe I wasn't SUPPOSED to get anything out of it but a few vague concepts connected by profanity. If that was the point, then mission accomplished.

As noted, I am aware that K.W. Jeter has written at least one good book; however, I'd have to say this one wasn't it. But very few writers succeed every time, and judging by the other reviews, it obviously appeals to others. Okay.

I highly recommend this book to any fan of Philip K. Dick. (At times Jeter's fiercely ironic style made me wonder if I was in fact reading a "lost" Phil Dick novel!) Jeter's perverse, dark vision of the L.A.of the future envelops your senses with a mixture of revulsion and fascination as the story unfolds. Other reviewers here have already summarized the plot and setting, so let me just add that the book is disturbing and brilliant, and if you can stomach the sexual perversions and gore, you will come away astonished that somehow "Dr. Adder" (written pre-1972, anticipating cyberpunk by at least 12 years) has escaped your attention until now. The afterword by Dick is noteworthy too. One of the characters in the novel is based on Dick, although Phil mis-identifies that character in his afterword, in my opinion.

Dr. Adder is one of those books that gets better the longer you read it. The story starts off thrusting the reader into the disturbing streets of a future L.A. where the title character is a specialist in transforming prostitutes into mankinds most twisted desires. Tempting to put down (as I did, regrettably, the first time I started to read it), the story begins to take on a live of its own.

The story focuses not on Dr. Adder, but instead on E. Allen Limmit and his discovery of life outside the corporate home he spent much of his life. As his life becomes inevitably intermixed with Adder and Adder's arch-nemesis, he learns he is a pawn in a much larger story, one he was, literally, born to be. Writen 12 years before it was published, the book is brilliant, one of those incredible first novels that shows the author knows more about writing than some long-established authors. The ending had me laughing for minutes, and though I had once told a friend that I would never read it again (while still in the disturbing subject matter of the first fifty pages) I look forward to additional readings of this classic in the years to come.

I would not have read this novel except that I'm an avid Star Wars fan and nothing new had been released since "Isard's Revenge" when it came out. Well, I found the first two in this series lacking terribly and this book was no exception. Although it had its moments when I forgot that I was reading a second or third-tier Star Wars book, KW Jeter still makes too many mistakes. The space battles were not written correctly (evidently KW Jeter has never heard of ion cannons and only once, if memory serves, makes mention of shields) and we get still more of a jabbering Boba Fett who, although fooled by Xizor, is impossibly brilliant all-knowing and nearly all-powerful. How boring and predictable. The main plot is resolved to be gimmicky and downright lame. How anticlimactic. The idea that one of the galaxy's most powerful corporate heads could be bothered with the affairs of a bounty hunter to the degree that he was is ludicrous.

If you have not started this lackluster series, save it for when you are really bored. There are so many better Star Wars books out there. And, once again, the editors at LucasFilm have done a disgraceful job. Not only did they fail to head off or substantially fix the 'mechanical' errors in this novel, at one point a particular capital ship is referred to as a "Zebulon-B frigate." I'm NOT joking. It's on page 325. I wonder if they could spell i-n-c-o-m-p-e-t-e-n-c-e, eh? A better name for this would have been "Horrid Merchandise."

Well, I've got to disagree to some extent with those who panned it. I felt this was the best of the series. It had the most action, and Jeter seemed to come into stride characterizing Boba Fett. There were a lot fewer references to his "cold eyes", "cold personality", etc., and a lot more characterization (though little character development).

There was indeed a lot of action, as a series like this one should have. Face it, you're talking modern space opera when you're reading a book like this, and you really shouldn't expect much more than Star Wars fun.

The problem with the book is that nothing about Boba Fett is explained, and nothing about him changes. Is this guy ever going to take off his armor and take a bath? Are we ever going to see what his cold eyes look like without a helmet?

Is he ever going to fall in love? Do something altruistic? Help a grandmother across a street simply because she needs help and not because there's money in it?

(Or, perish the thought, make a mistake?)

Obviously, this is not the end of a trilogy, and we need more books.

Come on, Jeter, do something with this guy!

The third installment of 'The Bounty Hunter Wars' has been the most catchy of them all (it took me two days to finish!). This book tells you of Neelah's true self and details the minds of the powerful scum of the universe. For Boba Fett fans you'll love him so much more, his bravery is stunning. Luckily Jeter has dropped the whole 'barve' thing from previous books. Jeter has an extreme talent in detail writing though some points in the book have no need but still set the scene amazingly well. Another great thing which was done was how the whole universe knew about the Empire's growing force over Endor. This book is extraordinarily great but the first 'The Mandalorian Armor' is still the best. I recommend that if you wish to read this powerfull book you read the previous two that way you'll understand things easier as the plot is dense. My only hope is that Jeter comes back with another Boba Fett story because he has proven himself as king of scum!

Well, if you throw out all continuity with the rest of the Star Wars universe - at least that according to previously published material - this novel might be engaging.

Major problems:

1.) the character of Zuckuss is NOT the character met in _Tales of the Bounty Hunters_ SS "Of Possible Futures: the Story of Zuckuss and 4-LOM" by M. Shayne Bell.

2.) no mention of 4-LOM anywhere, instead Bossk is teamed with Zuckuss?

3.) One character Dharhan is introduced as a tease into Boba Fett's past and then summarily killed a hundred pages later.

4.) IG-88 is a different character than that presented in all previous material, especially "Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88" by Kevin J. Anderson.

And there are more.

If you prefer material that is consistent with the SW universe do not read, buy, or even acknowledge the existence of this book. How it got past the presses and published is beyond me.

This alternate Star Wars back story gives us a look at just what an ice blooded baddie Boba Fett really is. Those expecting the noble heroics of the usual SW stories had better look elsewhere, this noir stuff of the blackest hearted kind. Chock full of back stabbing and double dealing (and the resulting bloodletting), The Mandalorian Armor satisfies, but you might find yourself wanting a breath of fresh air afterwards. Recommended.

Dancing one's way into a Sarlacc can invoke some bodily problems in anyone, including the most dangerous bounty hunter to grace the universe's ballrooms, and can leave them reliant on the aid of another in these times of trouble. Such is the case for Boba Fett, stricken by the misfortune of working for a Hutt and sticking around a desert planet a little too long, as well as the Dengar that finds him after he's blasted his way out of that eating machine. So, what does one do with a bounty hunter that would be worth a fortune dead and more if he were allowed to live and keep his promise to make you a partner? This is a tough question considering he knows some of the past that has led to the mystique of the universe's most loved bounty hunter and that many a person would try to [destroy] him if they knew that he was in a weakened condition and you, too, if you were to allow yourself to get in the way of their whims.

In this installation, I personally found myself liking the story as it wandered through the Bounty Hunter's Guild and the fall of such an esteemed organization, enjoying the scheme that Kud'ar Mub'at and his arachnid-like portions has birthed into being - not to mention the character itself and the oddities invoked within, like the fact that a piece of himself would one day arise and consume him and take his place. I also liked looking into the mindset of Bossk and his partner-in-crime, Zuckuss, as they bumbled about and ended up picking up Boba's scraps. The series also builds on other things that I liked as well, including some rather odd Hutts that are always enjoyable (bigger is better, especially when you have suits that can defy gravity) and are always trying to stay one step ahead of the game, plus the fact that Boba throws some plans into action that are actually high caliber assaults upon the playing field. Unfortunately, I've read the entire series and can say that this book was good but that the second installation was a painful trek into the mindset of redundancy and hurts the groundwork laid herein, making it hard to continue onward. There are times when the repetition of ideas is ground into the reader's mind over and over again as the works progress, making it an annoyance as you are given a person's mindset three times too many or when there is an event that has been [repeated over and over] and is still being dredged up.

If you can stand the fact that the book isn't exactly iron-on idealism to the Lucas empire and that Boba gets to crawl his way out of the Sarlacc ... then the first book herein is a pretty interesting read. It does like to play a bit and the series continuation hurts me as I recall reading onward, but this installation - graded by itself - births an interesting array of characters and ideas as it moves toward galactic [plan]. You simply have to bear in mind that one portion of the story might be the only piece you ever really want to read from cover to cover.