Reviewed by
  Ebony McKenna

Reviewer Rating: ** Stars
Title: Duty & Love
Category: Science Fiction/Romance
Author: J. Farris
Publisher: DiskUs Publishing
ISBN: 1-58495-218-0
Release date: September 2000

There are two schools of thought with writing. One is to read as much as you can to appreciate various styles, learn rules and hone skills. The other is to not read anything and develop your own style in a vacuum. It means you have to teach yourself, and it also smacks of intellectual laziness.

Duty of Love has all the hallmarks of falling into the latter category.

Science fiction requires the writer to be inventive and imaginative. Duty and Love is set in the 22nd century where computers still have a tangle of cables to attach and the main character has to get his dog to type for him. The Macintosh airport, available NOW enables cable free computing. Plus,
voice recognition software is widely used TODAY. By pointing out these faults, I run the risk of coming across as a sci-fi snob or attracting the wrath of the author. But I have to be honest, this book is really ordinary.

The plot revolves around John De Lancy, an actor blinded in an accident who adopts a seeing-eye neo-dog, Buffy, whom he falls in love with (and not in the Platonic sense). Farris doesn¹t sell the story with any conviction, giving Buffy every outward appearance of a dog, except she can talk, has nice boobs and shapely legs. The story is sickening, especially the scene where John and Buffy bluntly discuss masturbation. Considering just about every new scientific endeavour results in outcries from "moral guardians", the concept of human/animal sexual relations should be a match to the gas tank for community outrage, but strangely not here.

As for character names, it seems Farris hasn¹t looked too far for inspiration. The main player is John De Lancy. What do you know? There¹s a real American actor called John De Lancie who plays Q in Star Trek, The Next Generation. Was Buffy named after The Vampire Slayer? Buffy talks lots.

Buffy talks in third person. Buffy annoying as hell. Buffy annoy people more than Jar Jar Binks. This tedious child talk lasts for around 60 pages, then three months pass in the turn of a page and Buffy talks normally.

The plot includes a "story within a story", where the main character, John, writes a screenplay with Buffy¹s encouragement.

"Finally, I shook my head. "Nah. I'm a washed up, blinded, scarred actor, not a world-class screenwriter. What do I know about writing?"

"You know what you would want to appear in. You know the type of screenplay you'd die to be in. I believe in you. Try it. Please, master. Try it."

"Well, all right."."

Not long after this lightning fast turn around in attitude, John knows exactly how to deliver the goods: 
"We spent a few days on the usual courtroom drama scenes audiences expect to build the tension."

The irony is John knows what audiences want, but Farris is unable to deliver it.

The pace and drama do improve around page 120, when John¹s agent and his ex-girlfriend get some action, but by then it¹s too late This excerpt, a few pages short of the finish, sums up the reading experience: 

"I tried to pay attention, even though after a few minutes, it was incredibly dull."

If an author can't create a character who is interested in the world he has created, how can he expect the reader to be interested?

Copyright © 2001 by  Ebony McKenna