Santiago

“They say his father was a comet and his mother a cosmic wind, that he juggles planets as if they were feathers and wrestles with black holes just to work up an appetite. They say he never sleeps, and that his eyes burn brighter than a nova, and that his shout can level mountains. They call him Santiago.”
 
A ”space western” with a remarkable emphasis on storytelling and legend weaving, this novel is a study in larger-than-life characters. In many ways it reminded me of a Sergio Leone film. It certainly has a lot of the makings: solitary bounty hunters competing for the prize (occasionally entering into dubious partnerships where the one is as likely to stab the other in the back as anything else), some really shifty folk, cantinas in frontier towns, lots of desert scenery, etc.
 
In the universe envisioned by Resnick here there is a clear divide between the Frontier Worlds and the "Democracy". In terms of the American frontier, you could think of it as the (Wild) West as opposed to the East. Decent folk from the Democracy venture into the Frontier Worlds at their own peril, as this is the domain of outlaws, bounty hunters and fortune seekers. All this, of course, takes place over a great number of star systems.
 
The Santiago of the title is a legendary bandit / outlaw who has been harrying Democratic expanse (by, for example, robbing them of their gold) and there is a significant price on his head (that has been growing, with his legend, over decades).
 
This book follows a number of bounty hunters and other stakeholders (each of which more colorful than the next) as they pick up his trail and follow it to where the infamous outlaw is hiding out, but they may be getting more than they bargained for as the novel explores the differences between myth and reality.