title: Duty: A Novel
author:  Jim R. Lane 
description: This provocative morality play, Lane's second novel (after Static), is a scathing indictment of the military justice system and the cover-your-rear attitude of the U.S. Navy. Petty Officer Marion Lamm, a 12-year Navy veteran and respected sailor aboard the fleet tug Modoc, based in San Diego, is falsely accused of homosexuality by a druggie shipmate. The ship's captain, an irrational martinet and rabid homophobe, demands that Lamm be court-martialed, ordering the legal officer, Lt.Mark Palmer, to gather enough evidence to ensure a conviction. Palmer is a hapless but ambitious officer with 16 years in the service and, though he knows the case is a sham, he's too frightened to cross the captain. The mysterious disappearance at sea of Lamm's accuser complicates the case, but the captain bullies Palmer to carry on. While Palmer investigates, he begins to have private doubts about his own sexuality, realizing how difficult it is to categorize and certify desire. Other servicemen are disgusted with the blatant injustice they observe, but conflicted Palmer persists in selling out his conscience and honor, with predictable results. Palmer's last-minute change of heart and a confrontation with his captain saves neither Lamm nor himself, and the Navy's attitude that "the appearance of justice is as important as justice itself" prevails. Earnestly lacing his story with stinging critical commentary about the military's hypocrisy regarding homosexuality and sexual harassment, Lane candidly depicts rigid career officers and near-illiterate, bigoted and slovenly enlisted men, and Palmer's fainthearted complicity humanizes the book's central moral crisis. Through the character of the conflicted Palmer, Lane emphasizes both the corrupt methods and the demoralizing effects of coercive politics in military life, and his absorbing narrative is a call to action. (Sept.) <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: Owned 4
  Bound by Duty
  Jess Taylor has been selected. Chosen by the annual lottery as a sacrifice to the aliens that saved mankind from the Great Plague, he
  could care less what happens to him. Little does he know that his first alien master doesn't provide much and has a gambling problem to
  boot. When the debt gets too high, he's sold to another who might provide all he needs and so much more.
  Noss, the first spawn of Prince Kranok, is duty bound to take care of his family. Unfortunately for him, no one wants to marry him
  because of his father's scandal. Noss doesn't expect much when he buys the human, but he gets more than a handful.
  Passion spirals quickly into something more meaningful, and they'll have to decide if being bound by duty can make them happy in a
  world where changing the rules might mean the destruction of the house that Noss is trying so hard to keep together.
  Genre: Alternative (M/M or F/F), Science Fiction
  Length: 40,485 words 
  
  BOUND BY DUTY
   
  Owned 4
   
   
   
   
   
  Jan