Star Web By Joan Cox

'Jade was a Linker, one of that special breed of pilots who guide starships through the treacherous lanes of the Star Web via mind-control. It was a fitting profession for a carefree drifter. Jade had and wanted very few friends: Heglit, his mind-link partner, and Borget and Lista, the sensual, golden-skinned Benjos who could pleasure a man to death.

He had no ambition greater than the cargo run, no destiny deeper than the next hallucinogenic "joyhouse."

Then came the mysterious mission when the ship's crew all died or went mad... twenty three hours inexplicably vanished... and the most powerful man in the Star Web began chasing Jade from world to world.

Fate was drawing him on an adventure linked to a planet's future, a fallen aristocracy, and his own incredible past.' (The back cover)

There is no wikipedia.org page for Star Web or Joan Cox. This might be the first time I couldn't find someone other than myself on wikipedia.

In Star Web there are space-port opium dens, interspecies threesomes that might involve siblings, a telepathic tree that also has a sex scene, and absolutely no semblance of a discernable plot. Somehow you have all of those things, lots of space travel, some galactic politics and a laser battle or two, and still you end up with a very shitty book in your hands.

Well, not entirely shitty, but not the hidden classic I have been searching for. Star Web is a somewhat entertaining fantasy/sci-fi book despite all of its faults. There are lots of cool parts and plots and dialogue, but they are all spinning in different directions. Have fun trying to understand this one.

Here is the plot synopsis: Jade is a dude who can mentally control space ships and stuff. Jade has yellow eyes, never wears a shirt, and often lets his hair down, which is supposed to be sensual or meaningful in some way. Really, this guy is never wearing a shirt, and the author accumulates pages throughout the book painfully describing Jade's chest. Heglit is some ornery half human who is somehow bonded with Jade and knows how to use a sword. They go on a flight and mind meld with the STAR WEB and when they come out, the crew are all insane or dead and they have traveled through time slightly. The ship is now theirs, so they pick up these two nymph aliens who may or may not be siblings and Jade has a threesome with them. Some politician from the center of the galaxy wants to kill Jade.

Heglit (who is probably also shirtless in this scene) takes the crew to his home system, which has been in exile for 200 years. They have to leave because Heglit's people snag Jade and run some tests on him, in which they find out Jade is the central galaxy politicians son or nephew or something. The cock rocker, the quiet half human, and the sex maniacs escape to the Benjor (pervert) homeworld, where Jade goes on some astral quest and bangs the aforementioned telepathic tree. There is also a telepathic dragon. Is anyone still reading this?

An example sentence: 'in the nowhere not-being place of the star web their brains created allegory to deal with unreality'.

There is a lot of that going on in Star Web, whatever it is. I tried re-reading a passage of this book while, um, high, but that didn't help either.