The Dream Vessel

The Dream Vesselby Jeff BredenbergAn enticing new world awaits—but getting there's half the battle.The Future Lies in a Pirate's HandsDestroying a ruthless dictator, it turns out, was easy by comparison. Merqua's Revolutionaries find themselves landlocked, and the only hope for civilization lies beyond a wild and perilous ocean. Only one shipyard can produce a vessel that's up to the crossing. But how do you negotiate with—or trust—slavers, powder-snorting pirates and cannibals?To complicate matters, the Rasta mystic Pec-Pec lurks in the background. The power of a world-changing mission has captured his attention. How will this inscrutable magic man, with allegiance to no one, twist the mission to serve his own dark plans?Book 2 of The Merquan ChronicleAlso by Jeff Bredenberg: The Dream Compass"I feel Jeff Bredenberg is a writer to watch closely. He has had three books published to date, and there is enough in them to satisfy many categories of readers: Even his minor characters are interesting; his settings, from Fun City to Caribbean ports, are sufficiently exotic to hold any interest yet always well thought-out and appropriate to their times; he writes sustained action sequences which twist like mating serpents; his themes are important ones; and his voice is different from anyone else's in the business. He is still at the beginning of his career, and it is hard to guess what he will do next, save that it is likely to be very good."—Roger Zelazny, May 13, 1993