Book Review: Starrigger by John DeChanc

Book Review: Starrigger by John DeChancie

Originally published in 1983 by Ace Science Fiction with cover art by James Gurney

Starrigger is the first in the Skyway Trilogy. The entire series consists of the following three novels
Starrigger
Red Limit Freeway
Paradox Alley


Starrigger opens up with Jake McGraw and his rig, complete with the impressed personality and memories of his deceased father controlling it, picking up a hitchhiker on their way to Mach City. Darla, it turns out, knows them, while they do not know her.

The adventure continues on from that point, rarely letting up across the 264 pages of tight furious reading filled with aliens, crooked law enforcement, monstrous floating aliens used as ships, as well as more and more characters pulled into the hunt for Jake and what he supposedly has found, a map to the entire Skyway, the endless black road that spans worlds linked by portals called tollbooths.

Driving from one world to another, Jake McGraw is the president of the Starriggers Guild, a very small independent truckers group working to make it in a tale of truckers between worlds. The Skyway predates human kind by millenniums, it runs from one world to another, and in driving along it, a person (or alien) can travel from one world to another. The Colonial Assembly strives to keep peace and maintain civil order in what is known as The Terran Maze, those worlds easiest to reach via the Skyway from The Sol System.

With over 60 alien races in all the Mazes (those sections of the Skyway clustered around particular areas), Humanity is not the oldest, nor the youngest, just one of the newer ones plying the road between the stars.

As Jake and Darla cruise towards Mach City on the world called Hothouse (covered with massive jungles where the anti-aging drugs are harvested, they are waylaid early on by his main business competitor, Corey Wilkes owner of Tatoo, a rival shipping concern. The laser beams fly early and mayhem ensues almost from the beginning as Jake and his father Sam (killed and subsequently with his personality and memories implanted into the rig that Jake drives) work to understand the rumors suddenly circulating about them and what they might have access too. Which is supposedly a map to the entire Skyway, showing in theory where the Roadbuilders could be found at, and unknown scientific discoveries.

This all unfolds across the entire novel as Jake’s sense of goodwill leads him into helping more and more travelers, bringing them into his fold.

At the heart of it this is a story of meaning, about discovering essential truths about reality and who and what we truly are. All wrapped up in a rollicking great read filled with aliens, characters with personality, near noir excitement and a truly one of a kind original setting.

Originally the reviewer picked the book up new, traded or lent that first copy away, bought several other copies over the years new and used, always sharing this book with any that might like it as well. This particular book was bought used somewhere, years ago back up in Iowa or perhaps Virginia.

This is one of those SF novels that is just begging to be read over and over. It cries out to be adapted to the RPG field; it demands wider circulation as a superb piece of writing. This is an awesome novel. The depth of the setting comes out as the pages unfold, drawing the reader into a believable world filled with the spectacular.

Reviews of Red Limit Freeway and Paradox Alley forthcoming once they are located again in the reviewers library so he can read them once again.

The author's official website