Reading in January 2010

I finished Weber's Short Victorious War this morning. I actually really enjoyed it. I still find myself skipping a few pages here and there because of infodumps, but Weber has a bit of a pattern with those, so my eye is now trained to glaze over and look for the next quotation mark. I haven't been lost yet, so I'm thinkin' I'm onto something here.

Today was my day off, so I'm now halfway through Field of Dishonor. I've really enjoyed this one so far. I'm really liking the politics that are now seeping into the story. It's adds way more depth to the universe Weber's created (and no, no pun intended there. Really.) and really makes it far more intriguing. It's not so "Honor Harrington comes in her ship, kills a bunch of baddies and hooray! all is well" with the politics in there.

'Cos really, if the series were just a bunch of books going on about how Honor is an awesome tactician, I'd be bored senseless. I like the direction this series is seeming to be going down.

________________________________________

Well, I just finished it. This was the best book of the series so far, I think. More than once did my heart start to beat faster and I held my breath as my eyes raced over the words. I really enjoyed this book and I can't wait to read the next one.
 
Last edited:
Kris Longknife: Mutineer by Mike Shepherd was a fun slice of military SF. While Shepherd's world and politics remain a bit vague at times, his characters were interesting and well rounded (Kris Longknife is not the epitome of perfection like say... Miss Harrington :D). The plot was serviceable with some nice action scenes. There were a few passages I could have done without, namely some overemotional military preaching, but overall Mutineer is a good series opener.
 
Hellions said:
K(Kris Longknife is not the epitome of perfection like say... Miss Harrington :D).
Click to expand...


But she is the daughter of the Prime Minister or something like that, so back to the tired fantasy tropes of the neer-to-do-good heir who rejects her family...
The book bored me badly and I never went beyond 100 pages; there is much, much better mil-sf out there even if you do not like Weber; though riding the coat-tails of HH it seems this series sold well enough to go 7 so far, so who knows I may give it a try from a later volume when in the mood, maybe it gets subtler and more interesting; incidentally the author has written lots of unremarkable mil-sf before as M. Moscoe

David Drake is doing the same trope in the Cinnabar series and while that one is slightly better and I read the first 3, it went to ground after by repeating the plots

Back on topic, I read Separation by C. Priest and I was mixed; it's a powerful novel but its message that by doing a deal with the devil, Britain remained powerful to the present day is disturbing; I see why UK people would love it and shower it with awards, after all who does not want his country to be the shining light of the world, but to me it read at times as very naive at best, since I credit the author not to take Holocaust revisionism seriously....
Definitely an A+ for writing but a D (at best) for subject and overall a B
 
suciul said:
But she is the daughter of the Prime Minister or something like that, so back to the tired fantasy tropes of the neer-to-do-good heir who rejects her family...
The book bored me badly and I never went beyond 100 pages; there is much, much better mil-sf out there even if you do not like Weber; though riding the coat-tails of HH it seems this series sold well enough to go 7 so far, so who knows I may give it a try from a later volume when in the mood, maybe it gets subtler and more interesting; incidentally the author has written lots of unremarkable mil-sf before as M. Moscoe
Click to expand...

While Longknife does express disappointment with her parents and decides to join the Navy against their wishes, in no way does she reject her family. That becomes quite apparent as the story unfolds. And don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming Mutineer is top-notch military SF, it was just a fun book.

As for Weber, despite my (mostly) tongue-in-cheek comment, I did enjoy On Basilisk Station, barring the atrocious technical info-dumps and the over the top flawlessness of the main character. I do intend to read the second book in the series at some point.
 
Hellions said:
I did enjoy On Basilisk Station, barring the atrocious technical info-dumps and the over the top flawlessness of the main character. I do intend to read the second book in the series at some point.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm on book five of the HH series and I'm sorry to say the info dumps don't go away. In fact, Weber begins to add political info dumps as well. These bore me. However, while they might go on far too long (I've found a few that go into three to four pages), they're easy to bypass. Weber more often or not puts them between bits of a dialogue. So, I've come to merely scan the pages until I see a quotation mark. Then the story picks up again and I haven't found myself lost plotwise by doing so (yet).

But as for the "perfect" Harrington. . . As the series progresses Weber begins to explore her faults and weaknesses. She begins to go down avenues you didn't expect her to go down. Don't get me wrong, she's still pretty heroic, but, really, that's why I continue to read the books. If she failed at her tasks a lot she wouldn't be put in a position of command and she wouldn't be where the action is. Which would make for a poor military sci-fi story.
 
NickeeCoco said:
Well, I'm on book five of the HH series and I'm sorry to say the info dumps don't go away. In fact, Weber begins to add political info dumps as well. These bore me. However, while they might go on far too long (I've found a few that go into three to four pages), they're easy to bypass. Weber more often or not puts them between bits of a dialogue. So, I've come to merely scan the pages until I see a quotation mark. Then the story picks up again and I haven't found myself lost plotwise by doing so (yet).

But as for the "perfect" Harrington. . . As the series progresses Weber begins to explore her faults and weaknesses. She begins to go down avenues you didn't expect her to go down. Don't get me wrong, she's still pretty heroic, but, really, that's why I continue to read the books. If she failed at her tasks a lot she wouldn't be put in a position of command and she wouldn't be where the action is. Which would make for a poor military sci-fi story.
Click to expand...

As a big DW fan (his books have been lots of firsts for me as I mentioned in my interview with him on FBC though that's about Safehold not HH) and considering that HH is my top on-going series in all genres, I generally avoid "shilling" too much about his work since as I see in others that do this about their favorite author, it gets tiresome quickly, but there are several things about the HH series that sometimes are less emphasized in general discussions in places like here, though of course on Baen's Bar which in many ways is Honor's "westeros" forum, they are dissected in mind-numbing (even for me as a big fan) detail:

1: the series changes dramatically in scope after book 7; actually books 6,7,8 are transition books and then the full space opera large canvas story starts taking more and more center stage than the pure local battles between Manticore and Haven; in particular Honor becomes a main character from a huge cast rather than the fulcrum of the series

2: the info-dumps are generally easy to ignore as long as you get their gist and what they mean for the larger story since a lot of the action is predicated on the accelerated pace of technological change under the pressures of (almost) total war

3: important characters die in the novels, Honor makes mistakes (implicit and explicit), loses battles or just gets lucky and wins rather than winning by her supermastery of whatever, while for some of her personal choices, let's just say that they give the lie to the mantra of Mr. Weber as this right-wing ideologue...; also while Honor is indeed important in the larger scheme of things, she is *replaceable*, she is not *the chosen/destined* one and in many ways her sort of foe from OBS Adm. Hemphill is arguably more important
in the eventual Manticore victory in the first Havenite war

And I could continue....
 
I just started Time Travelers Never Die, by Jack McDevitt. It's reading more like a script than a novel, but hey, at long as it's a *fun* story that's OK. I'm only 50 pages in, but no real complaints so far!

Ken
 
My scifi reading this month has been Sean Williams' Astropolis series. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to change our Tempo to make the work day go faster?! :)
 
Gizmo said:
I'm reading A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. It's been on my shelf for a little while so I finally got around to reading it.

I'm actually struggling to get into it currently but I have this feeling it's quiety going to grow on me
Click to expand...

I had the same experience. I started off mildly bored, and then by the end of the book I couldn't put it down. I think I read the last 250 or 300 pages in one day, and then immediately went back and reread the whole book...
 
nquixote said:
I had the same experience. I started off mildly bored, and then by the end of the book I couldn't put it down. I think I read the last 250 or 300 pages in one day, and then immediately went back and reread the whole book...
Click to expand...

Good to hear. It has started to grow on me fortunately.
 
Then there is hope for me as well :D

I'm still going back and forth between my electronic version of Chasm City and the paperback, but with finals and all that I haven't made much progress :(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Sponsors


We try to keep the forum as free of ads as possible, please consider supporting SFFWorld on Patreon


Your ad here.
Back
Top