#66. LIFE DURING WARTIME By Lucius Shepard

Published : 1987
Pages : 418
Overall Mark : 7/10

While on R & R, a few miles from the rotting vegetation of the jungles of Guatamala and the endless, drug-fuelled dirty war there, David Mingolla meets the beautiful and enigmatic Debora and stumbles into a deadly psychic conflict where the mind is the ultimate weapon and there's no escape from thoughts that kill. But Debora may be fighting for the enemy, and Mingolla finds himself trained to pursue the woman he loves into the heart of darkness...

LUCIUS SHEPARD (1947-)
Born in the USA in 1947, Lucius Shepard lived in various parts of the world from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. In 1985 he won the John W. Campbell Award and in 1986 he won the Nebula for his story R&R which forms the first part of Life During Wartime. He has also won World Fantasy Awards for the short story collections, The Jaguar Hunter and The Ends Of The Earth.

VERDICT
This interesting look at a future where wars are fought on a psychic level is an interesting look into how trust can be undermined quite easily when people have an ability that can both pry and manipulate. The ambiguous conclusion is very well done, giving the reader free rein to decide what elements for the protagonist were reall and which were hallucinatory, a function that makes the book much more puzzling that it coudl have been given a more final conclusion.