From: kuryakin@bcstec.ca.boeing.com (Rick Pavek)
Subject: +>SPOILER>+ Re: CHTORR!!
Organization: Boeing
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 22:16:07 GMT

Here's some additional info on the Season for Slaughter.  CR's for the
people who can't read subject lines...
































Here's one page, or thereabouts.  If you don't like spoilers, this is
your last chance.























OK, here goes.

You don't find as much morality/responsibility lecture as in #3,
but you still have it.  Thankfully, it only comes at the end of the
chapters in the form of an interview with an asshole interviewer.
Well, let's say he's of an opinion that he's interviewing foreman with
an eye towards exposing Mode training and it's influence of the government.

Additionally, Jim and Lizard wed, harvest and fertilize eggs for later
children, and we find later on in the book that Lizard thinks she is
pregnant.  Jim still has problems, just as you think he's settling into
a reasonable mode, we get more lectures or introspection on why he's still
flaky.  Yes, he's much improved, but mode training didn't seem to fix
everything.  Now he can be selectively bitchy.

Over half the book takes place on a delta dirigible running a study of
brazilian infestations.

Much is learned about the worms and their communications technique.
I believe we see the beginnings of a hive structure.  Worms see the
dirigible, which has active camoflage to imitate the color patterns
of the real worms, as a god who talks to them.  When Jim switches this
wormsong to a different 'pattern/clan/family' the worms go beserk and
kill everything; worms, people, foodchain.  Luckily they are sailing well
above the carnage, but drop down to a corral to save some preconverted
humans.  (some human women are turned into some hideous female libbet-type
form and are beyond salvage.)

Later, Jim and others notice something amiss when the captain of the
dirigible interrupts the mission for lack of sufficient helium to complete
the voyage.  We discover that the stingfly, in large masses, have stung
the top of the dirigible and its gas bags to shreds.  No amount of
intervention can save the dirigible and we see it crash into the jungle.
Some are saved and evacuated.  Some are not.  Jim and Lizard are,
but just barely, when the story ends.

Lot is clarified about how the invasion started with the molds/puffballs
and the stingflys.  The invasion had apparently started well before the
plagues, the plagues themselves being part of the conversion process.

Much is left for future discovery.

Nice thing is a (somewhat flip) interview with the author.  Tells that
there will be more stories and that #5 is in progress.

I finished it in two evenings.  OK, they lasted till 3AM each.  

Hope that helps.

My opinion?  If you haven't read the first three, you'll need them.
If you don't like any of the first three, you'll hate it.
If you have waited and counted the weeks until this one, you'll
love it.  

The journey is the fun, not the destination.  I say let it continue for
as long as he likes, as long as he explains more of it.  He does say
there is a definite end to it.

Hope that helps

Rick
:

-- 
Rick Pavek                       | Never ask a droid to outdo its program.
kuryakin@bcstec.ca.boeing.com    |           
Seattle, WA                      |   It wastes your time
                                 |          and annoys the droid.  
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