Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill

I enjoyed this books about musicians in a traveling restaurant. I liked the character interactions, especially between Billy and Libby.

3 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Four musicians in a folk band chance to travel with a restaurant that jumps in space and time whenever it's hit by an atomic bomb - which happens a lot.

Review
I remember those days in the late '80s and early '90s when Steven Brust was a fun writer, and I'd buy almost anything of his on name value alone. I think this book may have been the very end of that period, though I did continue to buy his books for a long period afterward, more and more sceptically, and becoming more and more disillusioned.

Feng's is a novel idea, but Brust uses it more to present a collection of attitudes than a story. The characters are mildly engaging, and I guess Brust has fun talking about and quoting traditional tunes, but frankly it comes across less as fun hobby than as deliberately exclusionary – if you don't agree with me that this is cool music, you're not cool. I've seen this same hobby explored better, frankly.

The plot is thin; it doesn't really hold together well, and there's not much to hold together. The end feels like a cheat. Brust is still a good writer, so the prose is smooth, and the one thing he does fairly well is the emotional notes of the story. But by now, the sardonic asides are beginning to feel more tic or affectation than clever and fun. I liked this a lot less on this go-round, perhaps because the interim has been 35 years of Brust doing the very same thing, and I'm longer giving the benefit of the doubt that perhaps I did back when.

If you're new to Brust or a Brust completist, it's fine to read. But if you're a casual Brust fan, look elsewhere for his best work.