C.J. Ryan Dexta

Dexta

C.J. Ryan

Bantam, Aug 2005, $6.99

ISBN: 0553587765

At twenty three, former sheep turned tiger Gloria VanDeen seems on her way up the long bureaucratic ladder at the Empire's department of Extraterrestrial Affairs better known as Dexta though currently she is level XIII in charge of five planets amongst the 2643 annexed orbs. However, a problem at backwater Mynjhino has surfaced that could derail her career. A report says that the local Myn populace is using semi-automatic rifles which are too advanced for them and killed GalaxCo humans.

Before she can investigate the massacre of sixteen people, she attends an event hosted by her ex husband, Charles, now the Emperor. They share a night of sex that makes the media news. To escape the sensation of no longer being a faceless bureaucrat, Gloria decides to leap the 862 light years from Times Square to Mynjhino. Nine days later, accompanied by her sheep of an assistant, she begins inquires into the seemingly ephemeral subservient Myn and another indigent race because she learned of several additional slaughters.

DEXTA is a terrific science fiction satire that lampoons much of the government-corporate complex that runs the United States and global economy. The structure at Dexta is brilliantly based upon a vast horizontal and vertical formal classification system, but operates under animalistic informal interrelationships. Once on planet the tale spins into another direction though it never loses sight of the classification systems; Gloria the tigress employs her boobs, brains, and body to uncover who is supplying the Myn and how to reach this strange race treated like cattle by most on planet "white man's burden" humans. C.J. Ryan provides a fabulous treasure that will have his appreciative audience anxiously awaiting his next entry in this wonderful universe.

Harriet Klausner