Voice Of The Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams (book review)
If you’ve followed my interest in the ‘Wild Cards’ reality book series, then you must have thought to look at some of the individual writers’ own work. Some, like Carrie Vaughn, have their own book series which makes it daunting to jump into. Walter Jon Williams tends to do single books. ‘Voice Of The Whirlwind’ is one of them from the late 1980s.
Etienne Njagi Steward is a beta clone, born three months ago and his alpha original hadn’t updated his memories and deprived of his last fifteen years of memories so only has memories to the age of 22. He builds up his muscles by exercise but decides to leave the hospital early to look for work. He also finds himself the recipient of a tape from his alpha. ‘The Whirlwind’ was the nickname of his alpha who also had the rank of captain.
Steward decides to go to Sheol, where his alpha died. Of course, he has to do it cheaply and speed learning to become an assistant rigger on the Born starship.
Williams’s writes with much detail, filling in the kinds of lives that goes on in this reality where people become cyborgs for enhanced senses or abilities. It belies the cost. To have a clone is expensive and not everyone can afford it. The main problem with this writing style is there is no change of pace so when a sudden action takes place, the sentence pace doesn’t change which reduces the shock value and easy to read on before realising what has happened. He doesn’t have a similar problem that is obvious when he writes for ‘Wild Cards’ so we will have to assume Williams is still experimenting with his style here. I’ve only read one of his other books, ‘Knight Moves’, and can’t recall it hit me the same way.
Much of this book is following how he proceeds in this advanced reality/ We do meet our alien allies, the Powers, who are a centauroid race living in a dense atmosphere. Helping them out gives Steward some base money to make himself very wealthy.
I’m having to avoid spoiler towards the end of the book, but it does reach a point where the plot path follows a particular order of predictable events, even if there is a twist at the end. The taste of this reality shows some complexities where people want enhancements and downtime. There’s almost a feeling that Williams wanted to stay within the plot he mapped out rather than saw ways to improve it. This becomes an interesting read but I’m not convinced this book is amongst his best.
GF Willmetts
July 2026
(pub: TOR, 1987. 278 page paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: 0-812-55785-9)
