All good things end. Some conclude with grace and dignity, in the full awareness that their time has come and gone. Others hold on, desperate for a last glimpse at glory. The Exile Kiss, sadly, belongs to the latter category, a clumsy and anticlimactic bow to a trilogy full of promise and disappointment.
When we were last with Marid Audran, he was acclimating to life as Friedlander Bey's loyal lieutenant. In acquiring status, wealth and power through his association with the Arab crime lord, Audran had largely left behind the hustle of the dirty, 22nd century streets of the Budayeen, reluctantly swapping them for the polished and servant-laden corridors of his master's palatial estate. But though life was proceeding apace, according to Bey's designs, an unexpected development has thrown a wrench into Marid's indoctrination. Forces within the Arab city have conspired to frame both Marid and Bey for the murder of a policeman. But before anything so civilized as a trial can take place, the two supposedly guilty parties are kidnapped, forced onto a sub-orbital flight out of their familiar world and unceremoniously dumped in the middle of a distant desert where, instantly, every trace of their advanced civilization vanishes into the endless, devouring sands. Marid must valiantly escort his master across miles of unrelenting desolation to find help and salvation in the form of Bedouin tribes sympathetic to their plight. But even if the Bedouin can aid Marid and Bey back to civilization, only enemies and discord await them there. Will they have the strength to confront and defeat their challengers?
The Exile Kiss is essentially two books which, unfortunately, are equally impotent. Part one concerns Marid and Bey's framing and forced deportation to the desert where their enemies fully expect them to perish. Though the Bedouin are a welcome contrast to the Budayeen with their codes of honor and their honest living, Mr. Effinger fails to inject this section with any sense of purpose. His intent is to give Marid an opportunity to see how the other half lives, to understand what his life might have been like had he been born into a different society, and to invest him with enough moral fortitude to return home and become a kinder, gentler Friedlander Bey. However, once Marid returns to the Budayeen in part two, Mr. Effinger all but drops the Bedouin storyline. An unchanged Marid acts as he always has, ensuring that the entirety of part one, but for a brief subplot with a Bedouin girl, is pointless.
Part two suffers from a different but equally devastating ailment. Not only does Mr. Effinger fail, even for a moment, to convince the reader that Marid won't have his revenge upon his nemesis, he allows Marid to take his revenge in the most anticlimactic and cliched manner possible -- the bad guy over-reaches in his feud against the protagonist, leaving himself wide open to an attack from an unexpected source. Even worse, the conclusion requires all of five pages! Three-hundred pages to set up a five-page denouement... This is the stuff of a sloppy, loopy amateur and well beneath Mr. Effinger's prior efforts in this series.
Mr. Effinger painstakingly established a fascinating arc for Marid Audran. The independent hustler was to trade in his autonomy for power, a transformation culminating in Audran assuming Friedlander Bey's position upon his master's death. Not only does Mr. Effinger fail to realize this promise, he does not imbue Marid with anything like the courage or ingenuity necessary for him to fill Bey's shoes. This is an unconvincingly and unworthy conclusion to a series that deserved a far better end than this. (2/5 Stars)
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