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Lords Of Terror by Allan Cole and Nick Perumov
02/02/2008 . Source: Paul Hanley 
pub: Zumaya Otherworlds. 406 page enlarged paperback. Price: $17.99 (US). ISBN: 1-55410-285-5). Buy Lords Of Terror in the USA - or Buy Lords Of Terror in the UK  check out website: www.zumayapublications.com
I first made a start on this book over a year ago. One of its central themes is that the Cold War re-ignites and lasts for 1000 years. I thought this seemed rather too far-fetched but given what has happened since, perhaps the authors knew something the rest of us didn't.
We are in a world of star-liners and orbital fortresses but this high technology is operated by devils, spirits, goblins, brownies and the like. Old Scratch is an engine devil driving a star-liner across the interstellar void. Such devils have to obey their human masters as was decreed by the Great Spell of a millennium before.
This star-liner is running cut-price honeymoon and second honeymoon cruises. On board with his grand parents is 10 year-old Billy Ivanov, an orphan and being half-American and half-Russian is somewhat of an outsider especially as he is the only child on the ship.
The ship is heading for The Frontier Zone which has hundreds of newly developed and terraformed planets where cheap entertainment is available in abundance. The region is studded with fortresses of the United Galactic states (UGS) and the Russian Galactic Federation (RGF).
Teams of argumentative spirits run engines and weapons. Normally, there is tension but no fighting but a Russian orbital fortress identifies strange signals as an American warship disguised as the elderly star-liner.
Something has given the impression that the star-liner is a warship and it is destroyed with Old Scratch and Billy being the only survivors. Both sensed some evil before the catastrophe.
As the opposing sides gear up for war, various individuals on either side begin to suspect that there is a sinister conspiracy to keep the Cold War going. Gradually they, Old Scratch and Billy, reveal the conspiracy.
This is rather an odd and unusual book. I certainly think if you like fantasy and a story then it is worth looking at.
Paul Hanley
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