Irontown Blues

It looks like John Varley wrote "Irontown Blues (Eight Worlds Book 4)" to tie up some of the loose ends from "Steel Beach (Eight Worlds Book 2)" and "The Golden Globe (Eight Worlds Book 3)." Unfortunately, he decided to write the wrong story instead of the story about those loose ends. In general, this book has none of the length, depth, or complexity of those earlier books. Where those books did wonderful jobs of exploring the society as the characters went through their actions, this book is almost entirely focused on the characters' few actions. There's almost no feeling for what's going on around them. Also, the "gumshoe" voice Varley uses just doesn't belong in an "Eight Worlds" novel and is done poorly enough to come across as being a kid's book (which it is NOT). Worse still, at the 85% point, we're shown that what we've been reading until then is really not what's going on (I had guessed that, myself, and dismissed the thought as being too ridiculous). At the same time, it becomes obvious that something bad will result from what just happened (which it does almost immediately, though the mechanism is never formally explained). Plus, once that happens, the story basically breaks down. I'm definitely not happy with this book and I'm rating it at a Pretty Bad 2 stars out of 5 (though I'd really like to drop it another half a star to a mere 1-1/2 stars).