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Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis
So it's a damn, damn shame that DEF:tP feels like it's written by Weber, because I really like Walter Jon Williams. I liked his cyberpunkish Hardwired and Voice of the Whirlwind. I liked his fantasy City on Fire and Metropolitan. I really liked his story of how a culture may select Gods to manage the most dangerous of technologies (Aristoi), and I thought his comedies (The Crown Jewels, Rock of Ages, and House of Shards) were, well, just damn funny.
I don't know what happened here, other than maybe Williams has Weber's arm up his ass -- that's the only explanation I can come up for this book.
The background, at least, is somewhat interesting: The Shaa, an alien race, have subjugated everyone around them for thousands of years to the point where nobody even thinks of the concept of rebellion -- everyone's been assimilated into the Shaa empire. This includes the Terrans (whose process of subjugation is the cause of the naming of the battleships Bombardment of Los Angeles, Bombardment of Delhi, Bombardment of Buenos Aires, and a few others) and the Naxid, who were the first race to be subjugated by the Shaa. The Naxid, by the way, are insectile (or insectoid, as the book prefers to call them). As everyone knows, insectile creatures are inherently evil. You'll be happy to know that one of the other races, the Torminels, is a race of nocturnals hunters, with "a plump and furry body." As is appropriate for teddy bears, the Torminels appear to be relatively harmless but when pushed are discovered to be ferocious and honorable fighters. Gotta love the Ewoks!
Anyway, back to the story: Everyone's living in harmony. Unfortunately, the Shaa, who are functionally immortal, have been slowly suiciding because, well, they're bored, and finally the last Shaa kills himself. Will the perfect order his race forced the universe into remain unchanged as he wished? Don't count on it.
Remember the Naxid? They're insectile (sorry, insectoid), and so do the only thing that an insectile (or insectoid) race is allowed in sci-fi books: They try to take over. All the other races band together to try to beat them. Apparently, Dread Empire's Fall will be the saga of that war. Thousands will fight, and millions will die. No one knows who will live and who will die. Anyone's life could be snuffed out at the next moment.
Well, as long as we define "anyone" to be "not Gareth Martinez or Caroline Sula." See, Gareth Martinez (who, by the way, is tall and considered handsome by some, very intelligent, and is cursed by a provincial accent and a lowly birth that means he just gets no respect) is one of our two protagonists. And Caroline Sula, described as "pale, nearly translucent skin, emerald-green eyes, white-gold hair worn collar-length ... Martinez threw the picture into 3D and rotated it, and Sula didn't have a single bad angle" is also very, very smart. Caroline, by the way, has a nasty little secret that you'll be very, very surprised to have revealed to you if you've been recently lobotomized and consequently not figured it out fairly early in the book.
Anyway, The Praxis covers the death of the last Shaa (whose name is Anticipation of Victory, by the way. Normally referred to by everyone as Vic, I'm sure, unless his mother was very angry at which point I'm sure it was "Anticipation of Victory you clean your room RIGHT NOW!") and the beginning of the take-over attempt by the Naxid. You'll be delighted to know that Martinez figures out what they're up to, but nobody listens to him, so he only manages to save one ship. And then, against overwhelming odds, manages to escape. You'll be delighted to find out that our heroine, Caroline Sula, when put in her own precarious position (not to blow the plot, but it involves overwhelming odds against her and almost certain death) manages to do PHENOMENALLY well. Really, she becomes quite the hero. No, wait, why is everyone laughing?
Gareth and Caroline, by the way, hook up very briefly but due to Caroline's little secret not much comes of it and she runs away to ignore him for approximately 400 pages until, three pages before the ending of the book, she sends him a note that basically says "Wow, you and I are both the heroes of this saga and so are destined to be incredibly lucky. Wanna hook up?" No, I'm not really embellishing this much.
The aforementioned 400 pages pass by relatively quickly (how quickly? I bought the book approximately ten hours ago, and have spent much of the intervening time having dinner with my family, downloading p^Hdrivers from the net, and writing this minireview). They are filled with one-dimensional characterizations (see this good-for-nothing non-com? Don't worry about him -- he'll be good-for-nothing until the last drop. This tough but incredibly smart retired weapons chief? Good guy. You can trust him not to screw up. Ever. This aristocracy Captain who likes soccer more than having a functional warship? Go ahead and write him off) and questionable strategic thinking.
Williams does throw some interesting twists into the DEF universe. The Shaa empire is ruled by the laws of The Praxis, the major religion everyone's bought into. The Praxis forbids most of the more interesting uses of technology -- bioengineering is forbidden, as is AI. FTL weapons are non-existent and FTL travel is done only through wormholes. This means that when dealing with intrasolar warfare, the main weapons are missiles. However, because missiles can't be controlled by AI, and because communication can't be FTL, the further away the missiles are from you (and the closer to the enemy), the less able you are to control them. Hence, missiles are shepherded by pinnaces, small one-person ships. Typically, a pinnace controls a volley of missiles and flies with them toward the enemy. If the pinnace pilot is very lucky and very good, they even survive, though most people don't think of this much as the last conflict the Shaa empire had (before this upcoming rebellion) was 3400 hundred years ago and lasted six days. Aside from wormhole travel, all other tech is decidedly hard sci-fi -- lasers and missiles, and both explosive and propulsion power is provided by simple anti-matter. Acceleration couches are an important fixture on ships. In fact, acceleration plays a pretty important role in most of the battles (and Williams makes one of the races both supreme tacticians and incapable of anything more than 2G. OK, that's different).
Really, though, there's nothing there to redeem the one-dimensional characters, the simplistic prose, the improbable odds our heroes manage to slog through with great distinction, and the waste of your time. If you like Weber's Harrington series, you probably want to check it out. If you're the sort of Walter Jon Williams fan who simply has to read everything he writes, your decision will be clear. As to the rest of you ... stay away.
In case you're interested, Williams has a homepage.
You can purchase Dread Empire's Fall: The Praxis from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
I can confirm its location... but not its existance.
"Yes, you should buy all these books. They're very good... for my sales commission. Oh no, did I say that aloud? Please ignore my last statement. Thank you."
look, there goes a one-dimensional book review!
2 1337 4 u!
Spending the entire first paragraph bashing another book series than the subject of the review, and also anyone who does like said books. That's an *excellent* way to build credibility.
Or do both of those characters sound like they produced by a Random Mary Sue generator?
I couldn't agree more about the Honor Harrington series. Its absolutely terrible. Sci Fi books commonly have problems with depth of characters but at least in most books there is some. Stephen Donaldson's Gap series is an example of how SciFi should be (although I generally prefer the Fantasy for this reason). Why do people like the Harrington series?
Remember the Naxid? They're insectile (sorry, insectoid), and so do the only thing that an insectile (or insectoid) race is allowed in sci-fi books: They try to take over. All the other races band together to try to beat them.
The Khepri in China Mieville's stellar near-sf steampunk fantasy Perdido Street Station do not try to take over. It's an amazing book. Coincidence? I think not.;)
Of course, there is a different nasty insectoid race in the even better same-universe The Scar, but they gave up on the take-overing millenia before the book.
I highly recommend China Mieville's writings.:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
...but I generally don't finish crappy books.
(and Williams makes one of the races both supreme tacticians and incapable of anything more than 2G. OK, that's different).
anyone ever see ST II: The Wrath of Khan???
I really liked that series. However, the one you mentioned, that shall not be mentioned again, was bad. Very bad.
By The Power Of GreySkull!
As encouraged by Baen Books, don't blow a wad of money on the Honor Harrington books until you know you are going to like them. How do you know? You read them for free on my website. :)
http://baen.ghostwheel.com/
_IF_ you get hooked, then buy the books.
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
I thought the first few Harrington books were alright- the first 3 or 4. Then it got really weak...
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
Anyone else picturing the comic store clerk from The Simpsons???
I wish I could mod this entire article as offtopic. I mean sheesh, the overview blurb has nothing to do with the actual book he is reviewing. Aren't editors supposed to cut out all the personal venting. I then proceeded to read the full review and discover that yep, the entire article is one big rant. Feel free to explain why you think this is an insightful article if you disagree.
David Weber is the Jackie Collins of sci-fi.
I will admit to loking his starfire series, though.
Obviously you've never read any of Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth novels - the primary 2 races of the Commonwealth are human and thranx, who are insectiod.
AND the thranx are a damn sight "nicer" than the humans.
AND they aren't a "hive mind" or any of that crap - they are individuals.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Interesting, but I had recently came across this article in Yahoo, of all places, that gives a particularly insightful review.
"Yes, you should buy all these books. They're very good... FOR MY SALES COMMISSION"
Oops, I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet.
The book, like this review, is a collection of cliches that aren't necessarily true?
Sheesh.
Oh, and the reason that the Honor Harrington story is told the way it is -- it's a retelling of Horatio Hornblower, which is written the same way. Not everything is sci-fi...
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
I'm glad someone else out there hates Honour Harrington as much as I do. Whenever I find books as bas as that never ending series, I always go back to the Falkenberg universe and sigh as I read about characters who have some motivation and depth.
On that note, who wants to start a petition to get Jerry to take a pause from writing Janissaires novels and get back to a book or two about the time between the Seccesion wars and the 2nd Empire?
Maybe that's why I liked Diaspora so much, for a while some of the characters go 5 dimensional and start moving in ways that'll give you a headache.
come for the naked robots, stay for the zombies
No story on bad Sci-Fi is complete without mention the Second Foundation trilogy. I got stuck reading all 3 in a similar situation to the poster. I haven't read Weber's books, but I'm willing to bet heavily that they're a lot better than than Brin, Bedford and Bear.
Amazon (without the gratuitous Slashdot referral bonus - indeed, without ANY referral bonus - AND from a good bookstore).
I absolutely loved the GAP series. Stephen Donaldson's writing is fanastic. Anyone reading this review should check out his books.
But that is a great review. Shitty sci fi books deserve to get pummeled imo, especially from authors who are known to do better. Speaking of which, i would like this guy to rip a non sci fi but equally deserving book apart (ahem "Rainbow Six"?). As someone who enjoys fiction, authors who *are capable of writing good fiction* who put out a bunch of stagnant predictable characters deserve scorn (*cough* Lucky Starr).
All of the Books Baen gives away for free can be found at the Baen Free Library.
David Weber, the Honor Harrington series consists of:
Book 1: On Basilisk Station
Book 2: Honor of the Queen
Book 3: A Short Victorious War
Book 4: Field of Dishonor
Book 5: Flag in Exile
Book 6: Honor Among Enemies
Book 7: In Enemy Hands
Book 8: Echoes of Honor
Book 9: Ashes of Victory
Book 10: War of Honor
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
It's been a long time. That felt great!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I'll tell you:
<BEGIN BOILERPLATE>
This book is about space and science. It is fiction. It is very interesting and published by the good folks at McGraw Hill. I give it a 9 out of 10 because the picture on the cover isnt so good.
<END BOILERPLATE>
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I have read the first six Honor Harrington books and I find the books interesting and quite enjoyable. The plots are not the same. I also enjoyed Weber's The Apocalypse Troll. (I find mentioning the Troll book very appropriate to this little review).
It would seem that the reviewer, who did not enjoy the books, yet read more than one. And the reviewer, who could navigate across country, yet could not find a single book seller along the way to find more appropriate reading, should seek help.
VeryGeekyBooks has more reviews of this book.
Read on to see what this has to do with Walter Jon Williams newest book, Dread Empire's Fall: the Praxis.
<Dark Helmet Voice> Absolutely nothing! </Dark Helmet Voice>
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Not merely bad, but not even understandable. I'd rather read the Gulag Archipelago in the original Russian, I'd understand it more.
Baen has been reprinting a lot of Laumer's stuff.
On the other hand, they continue to publish stuff by Eric Flint, David Weber, and John Ringo. Horrible, horrible serial-type stuff that constantly re-hashes the same garbage. Yeah, I really want to read about smug characters who sit around all day patting themselves on the back for being so clever.
This review was very useful to me because it proves I'm not the only one who hates this dreck!
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
I dislike the Donaldson stuff and liked the Harrington stuff.
Course, I'll probably get modded down for it, but the Donaldson stuff that I read (and I gave it the whole 6 book series Donaldson wrote a while back).
Face it, different strokes for different folks.
If this person wants to bash a new book by comparing it to a series that I like, then I want to find out what else he doesn't like, and what he does like. Then I'll pass on what he likes and buy what he doesn't.
Oh, and maybe he doesn't like the odds because he doesn't have enough military background to actually relize WHY the battles got he way they do.
A lame ass review about a lame ass book. God that was awful reading.
over the Anime articles, but this is still a mind-numbingly boring Slashdot article.
Better topics than this one include:
How to Gargle in 10 easy steps.
Buying Comfortable Shoes.
Roofing - Say No! to Being Wet.
Thank you for your devotion. Please read my journal for more info.
What I found interesting was the entire system of government that Weber sets up. On the original planet, he creates a parlimentry democracy with power balanced between The Queen, The House of Lords (aristocrats desecneded from the original settlers), and The House of Commons(elected representatives of the people). (Can you say British Parlimentry with a twist?) On a more feudal planet Honor Harrington is one of 72 Steadholders (a feudal lord with the power of life and death). Thier evil(TM) enemies are the republicans, who have a quasi-communist society that borrows names shamelessly from revolutionary france. Despite this it all blends together and seems workable.
I find the idea that a futuristic society could consist of something other than a Planetary Council/Senate/clone of modern american system very interesting. And I do feel you're being just a touch unfair with the one-dimensional concept, I actaully enjoyed reading all of them.
...after writing some Star Wars books... that pap like DEF sells better than just about anything else. Man's got to pay his bills.
It sets a comparison point.
If you like Honor Harrington, you will most definitely ignore the reviewer, and you may even enjoy this book!
THis is actually a genius reference point.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The upside to "In Death Ground" is that the next book I'm reading seems wonderful.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Maybe this is his newest book in the USA, over here the sequel is already out: The Sundering (got that link of WJW's page).
I find myself agreeing with much of the review (cardboard cutout characters getting killed or surviving in predictable ways), but at the same time I really enjoyed the book. I particularly liked the way that, since the Shaa had restricted various sorts of tech, you could zap around between stars at FTL via the fixed wormholes, but once in a system were stuck with relativistic physics (and no nanotechnology or AI to help out).
One point I think the review missed - the reason that the characters manage to survive against vastly superior odds is that neither side have any idea how to conduct a space battle - no enemy apart from the Shaa has a fleet of any size or control of the wormholes, so all the actions in the illustrious thousands-year history of the grand Shaa spacefleet have basicallly been bombarding planets into submission from orbit. This is brought out more in the sequel.
Could have lived without the rant about the series by a different author (but I haven't read the Honor Harrington stuff so maybe it was relevant).
-- Nothing unusual happened today
FWIW: Alan Dead Foster has created a deep, involving, enjoyable universe where the Thranx, an insectiod race, live in harmony with humans and tend to make up the pacifistic side of the Humanx civilization. Check out any of his "Commonwealth" related novels for a damn good read.
this is a little offtopic but no more so than the rant at the beginning of this book review, which reminded me of the worst book/author ever.
The worst book ever: Lord Foul's Bane by Stephen Donaldson
This is the worst peice of crap ever published (and I have been known to enjoy books based on the game DOOM). The main character is a middle aged leper of all things, who is the most despicable character in the whole story. Starting at about page 2, I was hoping someone would come along and put him out of his misery. The character is filled with self pity and has no heroic qualities at all. At the pinnicle of his despicability, he actually rapes a teenaged girl who saves his life early in the story. It seemed to me that the author thought it would be OK for the main character to be a self-pitying rapist with no moral fiber. On top of that, the entire story is a complete rip off of the LOTR trilogy, except that near the end, our main character finds himself back in suburbia wondering if the whole thing was a dream. It's just badly written, I couldn't read the whole thing once I found out the main character does not die the bloody, painful death he deserves. Since then, I have stayed away from cheap paperback sci-fi and fantasy. I hope my brain is never again tainted by the scribblings of talentless human typewriters.
TallGreen CMS hosting
I do and that's why reviews like this are great to have. I just keep reading, hoping something will happen to redeam it. Once in a while, I'm rewarded, and I'm usually just reading myself to sleap anyway. I would never have started reading the Weber book I just finished had I read this review first. The review will, however, save me the pain of reading another Weber book or this particular Willson book. His review hit Weber on the head, so I trust the reviewer's opinion of this book by Willson. There's better stuff to read.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sorry to all y'all who are bashing this review, but it's spot-on. I read this book, and it was a betrayal. Very cool universe, good writing style, but the substance was... bland. Pasty. Not satisfying at all.
Problem is, for really bad books, it's hard to be insightful in a review without sounding like a whiner. But this book does *just suck*, and as long as everyone who reads the review takes that point home at the end, it has done its job.
Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
David Weber and Eric Flint!! Awesome book just completed.
So.. go back to trolling about David Weber.
Review: 1633 is a sequel to the 1632 novel by Eric Flint ( YOU KNOW.. the ONE WHO POSTS HIS NOVELS on the NET for FREE??). It continues the story of the West Virigina town that was sent back into time to the 30 years war. Amazing plots, a whole game world is involving around this book series. We shall see it improve in the next book 1634: The Baltic War.
Good reading, read 1632 first though.. it sets up the universe.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
On advice of a foolish sci-fi bookstore clerk... Which one is the more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?
Space opera is also Banks, Simmons, Renyolds, Vinge or any of a half dozen other authors who can write complex, involved plots with great characters and subtle themes.
Harrington, Star Wars and similar stuff is more properly pulp SF
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I enjoyed the Honor Harrington books. You might, too, if you enjoy reading about heroic people doing heroic things. Honor Harrington is a heroic character: she isn't perfect, but she feels a strong sense of duty and does her best to do her duty. And her best turns out to be very good indeed.
If you are at all interested in the Honor Harrington books, check out the Baen Free Library. The first book is On Basilisk Station. (That link is to the HTML version; there are several downloadable versions as well.)
Take a look and decide for yourself whether these books are for you.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
... both explosive and propulsion power is provided by simple anti-matter.
:-) It combines well with:
Can't get any simpler than that, I guess
Williams makes one of the races both supreme tacticians and incapable of anything more than 2G. OK, that's different).
I can see how using such a wimpy explosive and propulsion power, missiles wouldn't be able to pull more than 2G and would do little damage, so the "supreme tacticians" will actually have a chance of surviving a battle.
I've wiped my ass with better literature than Honor Harrington.
Actually, the bugs (er...insectiles, or insectoids, or whatever sci-fi version of the "how you spell vampyre, or magic, or whatever" game the author wants to play) aren't always the bad guys...the Thranx in Alan Dean Fosters "Humanx" series are probably better people, on a novel-by-novel basis, than the humans. On a different track, GOD FREAKING BLESS YOU for your open "Weber writes novels with plots almost as complex as your average Harlequin Romance" stance. I have NO FREAKING IDEA why so many people who are into sci-fi like them, and defend Webber (I told the sci-fi geek at the local barns and noble that I think most of the Honor Harrington books are just paragraphs from the previous novels stuck together with "find and replace" used on the names and I swear to god he stopped talking to me).
Because it's Horatio Hornblower in space.
It isn't a coincidence that the main chacter serves in the "Royal Navy" and is fighting against an enemy that very strongly resembles France. Or that the title character's initials are HH.
There are strong similarities between the sagas of Hornblower and Harrington as well as between the Napoleonic Wars and Harringtons universe.
Harrington herself is a mixture of Nelson, Hornblower and Weber's own twist on the character, complete with space navy (Royal Navy), dastardly empire building opposition (France) and injuries parallel to those of Nelson (loss of eye and arm).
The latest in the main series has also opened the plot for a scandalous love affair with the consent of the other party's spouse (Nelson again)
Weber has indicated though that the plot will start to show more divergence from the events of the Napoleonic wars from this point on. Harrington (I think) will still probably die in her greatest hour destroying the enemy fleet when the series finally wraps up.
Frankly, though, there's a lot of bad SF out there that deserves to be trashed - it's only made because pre-pubescent scient-oriented teenage boys will read anything (well, except for most good stuff.)
One comment though: the Thranx, and insectoid race in Alan Dean Foster's Flinx & Commonwealth series, are actually more noble, peace-loving, and rational than humans. Less stinky too.
(Of course, Alan Dean Foster has really sunk to the level of the type of books that you're talking about, and his SF has never been really hard ... or even logical ... but he used to have a few good books now and then. But at least here's one example of an insect race being very good.)
Anyone else read this review and think of Battlefield Earth?
Somewhat similar premise: One alien race dominates the universe. Other races don't think to rebel. Eventually humanity becomes the savior of everyone and everything.
And judging by this review, it sounds like it was written with the same amount of skill. And no, I'm not Trolling or bashing another book or am Offtopic.... I am being serious here.
In Battlefield Earth: humans have basically reverted to hunter-gatherers; the sheer stupidity of one alien allows a single human to become hyper-intelligent, who in turn, gives this intelligence gift to more and more humans; they are treated poorly and therefore want to revolt; they attack the alien homeworld with a simple bit of uranium which ignites the alien-homeworld's entire atmosphere, killing everyone on the homeworld and dooming every alien elsewhere in the universe because they can't reproduce their atmospheric environment.
Karma: NaN
It seems to me that some of the same criticism could be applied to Laumer.
His "Retief" stories where essentially the same structure over and over again. A stylish, cool secret agent always ends up thwarting the bad guys and getting the girl, only he's in outer space and dealing with aliens. The sci-fi element is cosmetic at best.
Not that I'm complaining, mind you -- I enjoyed those books. But they seem to fall in a similar category.
Weber's characters have strengths and weaknesses. Honor isn't perfect. She has more character flaws than any hero from Star Trek or Star Wars. She's into revenge, and makes some mistakes because of it.
Her real strength is tactics. That makes sense; she's in a navy that trains and selects for tactical skill. She doesn't get that skill by magic; she goes to the Academy and works her way up to command over many years.
The Peep leaders are Weber's most complex characters. Some of them are boors, yet even Warden Tresca plays chess by mail. The Peep military commanders are in tough positions, caught between their political masters and military realities, and deal with them in different ways. Most just do their jobs. One or two go over to the Manty side. Some die for the People's Republic. Some try a coup. Rod Pierre (oh, please) has a tiger by the tail and can't let go; he's portrayed as ruthless but not evil.
Weber is writing for people who know what Jellicoe did at Jutland. Battle charts wouldn't seem out of place in Weber's books. Fortunately, like Tom Clancy, he has the sense to avoid them.
It's unusual to see tactical skill in SF. Usually, there's too much individual heroism and not enough planning. Historically, it's hard to find any example where individual heroism changed the outcome of a major war. But it happens all the time in fiction. David Drake gets this, and he's gradually been pulling SF around.
Tactics in print SF are bad enough, but in movie SF, they're appalling. Nobody in the Star Wars universe has any decent tactical sense. On either side. Much like World War I. Dune. Starship Troopers. Battlefield Earth. The list of bad examples goes on.
Sheri S. Tepper's 'The Fresco' features *several* insect-like sentient alien species who do not in fact attempt to take over. They are, in fact, mostly good guys, and the 'bad' ones are not bent on Universal Domination.
Look, there go some one-dimensional bad guys! Look, there goes the one-dimensional good guy (well, person)! Look, she's put in impossible tactical odds and yet somehow still manages to triumph! Look, she gets no respect back at home! Look, the next book rehashes the EXACT SAME PLOT.
And this is different from any other war fiction how? In pretty much all of the fiction written about war where war is the focus of the plot rather than an incidental part of the setting things unfold something like this:
1) Bad guys attack because
a) They're evil
b) An unfortunate misunderstanding
c) Mutual irreconcilable differences
2) Good guys respond. The battle wages back and forth.
3) Either
a) The good guys triumph against the odds
b) Nobody really wins because the moral of the story is the horror of war.
4) Good guys return to drab or even ignominious existance.
For that matter, most of the non-fiction accounts of war work out about the same way as well.
If you're looking for something more inspired, don't read war stories.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
You blindly purchased an entire series? Ever hear of a library?. It's a place where you can borrow books before you decide to spend money on them...
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
... where a West Virginia coal town is transplanted into Reformation Germany.
Weber cowrote 1633 with Eric Flint, who wrote 1632.
Both IIRC are available via the free library, and are very fun reads, particularly if you have a history bent.
Can't wait for the followups.
I used to be a pretty big Walter Jon Williams fan. I really enjoyed Hardwired, Voice of the Whilwind, and (to some extent) Angel Station. I also enjoyed The Crown Jewels and The House of Shards. All of the above mentioned book were released between 1987 and 1989 (i.e. the heyday of CyberPunk.)
:)
As far as the SciFi goes, I felt they were pretty good books. Maybe not classics, but certainly very good. Williams presented some interesting variations on the CyberPunk theme and I felt his books compared favorably to other stuff being released at the time. However, starting with Days of Atonement (or maybe Aristoi) I felt that his "vision" started going downhill.
At first I thought, maybe I just resented his moving away from CyberPunk. His first couple books could be loosely classified as CyberPunk, however, few of his books have any sort of consistent "world" or "environment". It's pretty clear that WJW like to play around and invent different "world" for almost every book.
But then I realized that the different "worlds" had started taking precedence over the "characters". The characters started becoming imminently forgettable, they were just there to populate this new world he'd invented. The biggest problem is that some of the worlds are interesting (Hardwired, Voice of the Whilwind,) and some are not (Metropolitan, City on Fire).
I actually felt that DEF:tP is better than some of his more recent attempts. However, there were still times I was tempted to just put it down and forget it...
Nice one!
If you want to peg a writer as a crank-the-handle, shallow potboiler merchant, just start with the old "petition" scheme.
Yup, your author of choice can just drop everything, and write a book to order, just how the obsessive fans like it!
The Black Company is a mercenary company involved in a whole series of wars. Good and bad are ill-defined, and in many cases the choice is between bad and worse. The Company itself is certainly never seen as being heroic.
It's a good series, well worth your time to read.
It has never pretended verisimilitude, veracity or anything else.
It's mindless entertainment.
In this respect its like the ol' Horatio Hornblower pulp. Or the "Roman de Cap et d'Epee (like reading "The Three Musketeers" in the original French) that my dad used to read. I use hooked on the "Doc Savage" pap and the Poul Anderson "Polesotechnic league" books that I knocked off one a night.
Or how about Jimmy Digriz a.k.a. "The Stainless Steel Rat."
If its NOT your style, don't review it.
You bought the whole series without reading one first? I must say that you're an idiot. I definitely don't want to trust any of your reviews.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
I read this book and loved it. What I love about WJW is that he has an incredible range. If you read Hardwired and then the Metropolitan series, you'd probably think they were by different authors, they are so different in style. He pretty much tells you in this book that he's sitting down and writing a classic old school SciFi romp. If you've read his other work, like Ambassador of Progress and Hardwired, he clues you in to his conscious adaptation of a style. He does that by using some classic imagry from that genre. And he does it in this one as well. I knew within a couple of pages that this wasn't going to something as depthful as Metrolpolitan, but it didn't matter, because he is so good at what he does. I'm sorry the reviewer didn't like this work. I encourage others to give it a try, knowing going in that he's adopting this style and playing with it. I expect there will be some twist later in the series, and I don't mean some generic plot twist, but a twist in style.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
For those Google challenged among us...
1632 by Eric Flint and 1633 by David Webber & Eric Flint
HAHAHAHAHA oh how can you walk? You must have BALLS THIS BIG admitting to that...
Ah Star Frontiers... damn... it's like 1987 all over again...
I don't get why there are so many posters blasting this review. The entire point of a review is to give the reviewer's opinion (check), support that opinion (check), and give the reader an indication of whether he would agree or not (big-ass check).
This is the first slashdot book review in living memory that didn't read like a poorly-done eighth-grade book report. It was a great review!
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Pretty silly science, but I had to admit at the time it was pretty cool. The book was actually decent space opera. I don't care a flip about Scientology, so I was able to read the book without an axe to grind, and I guess that helped. It *could* have made a good film in the right hands.
--- Ban humanity.
Hey! I didn't realize that the Comic Book Guy did book reviews on Slashdot. Welcome!
Entertaining and informative review. I'll be sure to avoid this one. Honor Harrington [shudder]
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
Have you ever read any of Updikes' "Rabbit" books?
Sounds like Donaldson is just looting updike and putting Rabbit in another setting. On the other hand as literature Updike books come close to worst of all time, as kindling they are not so bad.
These books are the Thomas Covenant books right? I hope so, that or else lepers are much more popular than I thought.
A better paraphrase would have been "It's so bad that it's coming back from the other direction actually good." The original quote talks about something becoming so extreme (Rincewind's cowardice) it become the opposite (heroism).
Yeah, just a nitpick for a Friday.
--- Ban humanity.
So says fellow rapist, sonofthor.
In addition to the oft-pimped Baen Free Library, you can also find their CD-ROMs included in several of their hardcovers which contain such gems as the entire Honor Harrington series. Or, if John Ringo's more your style, there's another CD with the entire Legacy of the Aldenata series available. Baen allows free distribution of these CDs, so long as no money is charged. I find it convenient to keep them on my webserver.
Lots of other good books not available on the BFL can also be found on the CDs, incidentally. It's a horribly effective marketing scheme. The BFL has cost me close to $300 over the last two years in books I would not have otherwise purchased.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Dahak Trilogy by David Webber. A fun read, and not endless like the HH series. The first book, Mutineer's Moon, is available in the Baen Free Library. Baen.com
TomB
"You can't take the sky from me..."
1633 is a sequel to the 1632 novel by Eric Flint ( YOU KNOW.. the ONE WHO POSTS HIS NOVELS on the NET for FREE??)
I like Eric Flint. I like him a lot.
But I get really damn sick of his nationalistic attitude. I do, man. I really liked 1632, and that was completely in *spite* of the dominant theme of Americans being the greatest thing in the fucking universe. I got sick of hearing about how this small-town America was such a wonderful fucking place. A bunch of rednecks show up in 1632 and start shooting up knights and crap.
Don't get me wrong, I liked the book. But he does much better with David Drake in the Belisarius series, which is really great. It's funny, and it's very serious at the same time. I love it! (of course, if you do a half-decent job writing any Roman-based fiction, I'll probably love it)
Like what I said? You might like my music
Comparing Dread Empire's Fall (DEF) to the execrable Honor Harrington series is a low blow indeed. But I think maybe the reviewer was in a bad mood when he read this book--he seems to have missed a lot of the subtleties. Or perhaps he should read more slowly.
Walter Jon Williams is something of a chameleon as an author. In fact, he seems to have challenged himself to write each of his books in a different style. If you were to pick up a copy of Hardwired, Aristoi, and Day of Atonement with the covers ripped off, I don't think you'd guess that all three books were written by the same author. Not only are Williams' books usually set in different universes, but his writing style changes to match the setting.
DEF is Williams doing High Space Opera. He uses all the familiar tropes, and cliches, and he does it quite consciously. Indeed, on one level this is a parody of the genre. Doesn't it strike you as slightly funny that the captain of a mighty space dreadnought should devote its entire resources to producing a winning football team? That the Evil Insectoid Aliens (actually, I thought they were kinda like squids--but hey, anything with more than 2 arms is equivalent to an insectoid) pull off their coup de main by holding a sports festival and then rounding up the participants? --It had me ROFL.
And there are surprises hidden underneath the well-worn space opera trappings. The plot isn't as simple as the reviewer seems to think. Yes, you should have a good idea by mid-book that Sula is a shady Lady. But this is precisely what I thought was so clever about Williams' portrayal of this character: you think you know what Sula did (I'm going to try to stay away from spoilers)...but the full impact of it doesn't hit you until Williams actually takes you to the scene of the crime (in a flashback scene). At least, that was the effect of the narrative on me: I felt very different about Sula at the end of the book than I did three fourths of the way through. Williams gives you an intellectual understanding of Lady Sula early on, but it is only when you witness the act and then understand her motivation for fighting like a demon during the space battle that you feel the emotional impact. And frankly, it sent shivers down my spine. Lady Sula is scary!
At the end, Our Hero receives a little note from Sula. It says something like, "I'm coming to meet you now. We are destined to be together, and we are going to make an irresistible team". If you have read the book, what did you feel when you read that note? I felt spooky...and I felt pity for Our Hero. Compared to her, he's a naif. He's hamburger to her meat-grinder.
I'm dying to read the follow-on books not because I want to see if the Good Guys defeat the Evil Insectoid Aliens (come on!), but whether Our Hero survives Lady Sula.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I read the series. I enjoyed parts: the flawed hero thing was fine, and the characters in general were pretty good. But the world was strange and implausible enough, and frankly irritating enough in the way it worked, that I didn't enjoy it much. And the end seemed like gratuitous weirdness. Somewhere it crossed the line between 'I give a shit how this series turns out' and 'pass the beer nuts' (thank you, Cliff). That's a very difficult line to walk when your hero isn't supposed to be terribly sympathetic in the first place, even if your *world* is. But the world was just a little too weird and felt contrived enough that I didn't care about it either.
I put down the last book with a feeling of relief, and some sadness, because I felt it was something that could have been so much more than it had.
Mind you, this is based on having read it 15 years ago or so. (And no, that doesn't mean I was 10 at the time. Not everyone on slashdot is under 30, or even under 50.)
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
I just did a quick scan for Pournell on Amazon.com and essentially everything listed for him is "out of print" and only available through "zshops". I haven't seen anything from him in years (I always liked his stuff more than the people he recommended).
Just a quick look at Chaos Manor says that he is finishing up a sequel to the burning tower.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Not always. Every night it gets dark and sometimes you can't aford anything but a vacation where there's nothing new to do outside and a nice calm night in bed is what you were looking for anyway. You might have boarded a cruise for two weeks with your wife and two year old daughter. You could be taking a tour of industry, visiting car plants, drop towers, observatories or even ship yards, where there's not even a bar to go at night much less something nice to look at. You could go on a two week hike and want something to read at night. These are the kinds of vacations where sci-fi makes sense. On other kinds of vacations, it sometimes rains.
The kinds of trips where a sci-fi novel would not make sense are few and far between. Mardi Gras is one. On trips to Paris and Quebec, I try to soak up as much local culture as possible and local pulp fills the bill, but even then it was nice to have something to do on the plane getting there. A book has been nice on all of my other trips.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have to agree that neither of the Thomas Covenant Chronicles is pleasant to read. The books just doesn't feel right like for example MacLeans "Golden Gate". I even have to admit I never completed the second trilogy since it got to boring to continue reading. (Kim S. Robinsons Mars-trilogy is the only other books I have the same problem with)
When considering the writing I would have to say I think it starts out noot so good but then improves rapidly.
OTOH I find both Mordant's Need and the Gap Series brilliant. Both of those series have that elusive balance between good and bad many writers seems to have problems finding.
And I also agree that Volsky is great. Illusion might be called a french revolution ripoff but it is a perfect _story_. The same is true for most of the rest of the books in that series.
But back to Weber. Anyone (like me) who liked Keith Laumers Odyssey, Poul Andersons Flandry, Falkayn and "whathisname" and of course Van Vogt and others will happily read everything Weber has written so far. I definitely don't agree that the plots are to similar in the books in the HH series. Both the universe and the main character evolves and matures throughout the series and I would not call it standard "Space Opera" anymore. His "Path of the Fury" is more true space opera.
If you want PoB inspired military SF instead of something originating with Forester go for David Drakes Leary/Mundy series instead.
That said, the reviewer seems to have his own conceit shoed pretty far up his ass. Aside from boiling down plot to small sentences, which sadly can be done to really any story, he continually harps on that -oid versus -ile suffix with regards to the Naxid. This, aside from detracting from the wonderful vitriol that otherwise fills this review, is done incorrectly. -ile, according to Mirriam-Webster: Main Entry: 1-ile Function: adjective suffix Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latin -ilis : tending to or capable of versus -oid, same source: Main Entry: 2-oid Function: adjective suffix Etymology: Middle French & Latin; Middle French -oide, from Latin -oides, from Greek -oeidEs, from -o- + eidos appearance, form -- more at WISE : resembling : having the form or appearance of The author of the book got it right... they ARE insectoid. I have nothing to say for the author of the review.
I found the character of the reviewer to be a trite re-hash of the standard "pompus twit" type so prevalent in American sitcoms. Shallow, one-dimensional, affecting sophistication... all in all, a complete waste of the reader's time.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Oh, just go and read Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy, which includes The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist, and The Naked God, each composed to a Part I and II, at least for the US paperback edition; if you're in the UK, you get both parts in one book.
What can I say- radical. 3600 pages of the best space opera I've ever read; the ending is a bit lame, but after drooling in post literary-orgasmic pleasure for so long, I didn't really care.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
... of the Galaxy Rangers! You've reminded me that I have to find and re-read that wonderful Harry Harrison book. He knows how to take his space-opera spoofing seriously.
Well, apparently, you only have to fool the majority of people for a little while.
first of all, flint is a self-proclaimed socialist. And the point of 1633 is essentially anti-nationalistic.
and second, drake merely wrote the basic outline for the belisarius books. everything else is all flint.
See Alan Dean Fosters' Thranx race. They are humans tightest ally's in his Commonwealth series.
Finally, a negative book review shows up on slashdot. I was getting tired of all these 8's, 9's and 10's -- they were diluting the scale.
-- DrZaius - Minister of Sciences and Protector of the Faith
The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
s /-/62/mass_market/ref=pd_serl_books/102-8992741-36 80963
c h/result s.asp?userid=18X274BKI8&SID=163618
Book 1: The Wounded Land
Book 2: The One Tree
Book 3: White Gold Wielder
Here's an Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/serie
And Barnes and Noble:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksear
------ "Darn floor. Big bite." (Koko the gorilla's best attempt at explaining the experience of an earthquake.)
Why is this on slashdot?
Sounds exactly like a book I would not like to buy.
/. fiction reviews have been excellent.
I learned a lot about both authors in the review. Good links, good form, minimal overview, good review. Most of the recent
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Why is the only explanation for one dimensional minor characters Weber's hand? First, any author is going to invest less effort in developing minor characters than major ones. When they don't, the author tends to say "X started out as a minor character, but by the time I has written 200 pages, her story took over the book.". There are only two ways to avoid this.
1. Write a book with only a few characters.
2. Write a book with a hundred characters, that is 3,000 pages long. Add five pages for every additional character, including the guy who just operates the elevator.
(I think Shakespeare has David Weber's hand up his butt - The guard on the wall is such a one dimensional character in Hamlet. And what about the troupe of players - the ones who start off as hams and scene stealers stay that way, as though performing at the royal court in those tumultuous times has no effect on them.)
How's this for an alternate explanation - What's the first thing editors cut? Could it be that most editors tend to cut scenes developing secondary characters before shorting the principals of the story?
Or, the author wanted to develop some novel ideas about how long a decadent civilisation could rule without an external challenge. That took some doing. Writing the major characters, he had to show how that background affected their lives and careers. In the process, he developed most of the ideas that seemed to flow from his premise. He realized that showing growth or failure of some of the other characters, he would be having his minor characters just imitate, in small, what the major ones were going through. That sounded preachy.
Who is John Cabal?
1633
Isn't it interesting, 90% of the comments are about the lead paragraph, which has little to do with the rest of the review.
I know some have praised this review, but come on, if your lead graph is both misleading and the only thing that people are writing about, something clearly went wrong between reading the book and writing the review.
Were I grading the review itself, I'd give it a C-.
Steven
I found The Praxis to be decent and enjoyable. It's not as much of a brilliant revelation as Metropolitan, say, or Voice of the Whirlwind, but then it is covering much more familiar ground.
It's a solid book in a familiar genre, with fairly well-fleshed out characters. And even then, it manages to be fairly fresh and inventive.
CrankyFool seems to think it's an Ensign Mary Jane story, where the heroes are swell people who naturally triumph because they're just that swell, and embody the writer's inflated self-image. That's not how it came across to me. For one thing, the heroes don't really save the day, in fact they struggle just to keep up with what's going on and stay alive. Secondly, most of the time their lives pretty much suck. Ensign Mary Jane never has to spend a month pulling high gees wearing a diaper. Thirdly, the characters are by no means perfect people. The male lead is vain and nearly a 1920's -style drone. The female lead has problems of her own. Frankly, being competant and somewhat good-looking are nearly the only things either of them has going for them.
Finally, the one thing I really liked about this book was the way that for most of the book, nobody knows what to do. The characters are slowly discovering what is going on, and when it all hits the fan, we see the characters basically just trying to cope, and that's interesting. I particularly liked the ruling council, who could have been just another boring ruling council like in Matrix Revolutions, but wound up being a lot of fun.
In closing, I suspect that after a bunch of big, heavy thriller-type novels, WJW decided to relax and have some fun with this series. I'm having fun too.
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Assmuing you don't read the Honor books as space opera he does have some valid points. But that is like reading a Robert L Forward book and complaing that it is a bad science textbook
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
That threw me into an unstoppable loop of having to read Anne Rice's books, looking for some quality of redemption, and finding each more execrable than the one before. It took something like 6 more of her books to make me come off it.
I think you've just explained the Vietnam War for me.
Really, what's the point of a review if we're left to figure out if the reviewer liked it or not? :-)
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Yep. But I'm talking about the next three - The Third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. He's talked about it before. Donaldson said that the first trilogy is themed on conflict with the adversary, the second on victory through sacrifice and the third (should it happen) will be about victory through acceptance.
Of course how he will do this now that Covenant is dead and Linden Avery has his ring is anyone's guess. On the other hand, Lord Foul once told him that 'even death will not protect you..' so maybe there's something there.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
You might try reading the David Feintuch's "Midshipman's Hope" series. It's a grittier, darker, more believable world than the Honor Harrington series. It's not all happy-happy joy-joy blow-up-the-aliens, yet there is high adventure and enough of a dose enough of hope that it's not "literature" a la 1984, On The Beach, etc. Very good read.
It really does make one wonder what the process was behind picking this "review" to post?
It is obnoxious, insulting and was written while he was finishing the book and browsing the web?
Maybe if he had spent the time focusing on the book instead of trying to multi-task he might have liked it some more. Or at least been able to offer some insight into the book other than foaming review he did post.
Is this the standard for /. reviews now? Makes me wonder if I'll even bother to read another one.
So, I'm reading the opening paragraph and I get the idea already. This Honorable Herringbone or whoever is just a cheap hack with no real talent. But then I see the synopsis:
Look, there go some one-dimensional bad guys! Look, there goes the one-dimensional good guy (well, person)!
Damn, that sounds pretty cool! One dimensional heroes and villains slicing through our three-dimensional universe! (No, I'm not granting time dimensionality status!) Gosh, Flatland be damned, this is like Turbo Flatland++! Perhaps some two-dimensional villians try to trap the one-dimensional heroine in a three dimensional closet, but a fourth dimensional bystander rescues her.
Or so I thinks. But then I thinks again. Too bad. Stupid literary metaphors.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
Bucher sind Scheisse, aber man hat sich angestrengt. Und das ist die Hauptsache.
Frankly, I'm a fan of the HH Series, Good rollicking old fun. It suits my tastes which are rather diverse. Is it (namedrop) Umberto Eco, Mark Twain or other heavy hitters in the world of literature? No, of course not. (/namedrop) Frankly you have to be Crazy To go out and drop 80 smackers on 10 books based upon some sales persons sell job. And if you're that big of a fool (/endwittydoubleentendre) to do that? Then you deserve what you got. I frankly think that if I'd been taken that bad I would do the same thing, try and mask my foolishness by spouting off a lungfull of vitriol and bile. His review while comprehensive and really very good gets lost in his whole opening argument. Which is what you get for having your whole opening paragraph be modded as nothing but Troll.
Which I'm sure this will be as well.
.
Good review.
Thanks.
Then the Fremen would face the basic problem of desert warfare against an enemy with air power - no place to hide.
The series is pretty good, at least the first four - I found them gripping although like you say pretty dark. It does seem like the books after four start to feel similar and the character seems kind of over the top, or some kind of caricature of himself... still, at least try reading the first few books in the series and see how far you get.
I have not managed to read any Weber books yet, so I can't help anyone there on figuring out if they will like Feintuch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Glen Cook wrote a series of books about the Dread Empire in the 80's. These were great books and i've been waiting for him to publish another in the series forever. This series even has a subplot about the Praxis conspiracy.
Did this author know about the previous series?
Sometimes I curse Tolkien--ever since, it seems that sci fi/fantasy writers just love to write series rather than single books. Makes it a chore at the library.
I don't know what happened here, other than maybe Williams has Weber's arm up his ass -- that's the only explanation I can come up for this book.
This is the most inappropriate comment I have ever seen in a published book review.
I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Walter Jon William's Hardwired is the cyberpunk reference, think of it as a Gibson novel written by someone who can elegantly manipulate the english language.
Besides, Hardwired was adapted by Williams himself as a Cyberpunk (first version) extension!
I love my Kykyueyes, sez primo poronostar Rod MCleish, and with the infrared option, I can tell if my partner's really exited or if I'm just on a silicon ride....
KIKUYU OPTICS I.G., A DIVISION OF MIKOYAN-GUREVICH
I have only read 3 series in the 35 years since I learned to read that were really outstanding; Asimov's Foundation, Brust's Vlad Taltos & LotR. There have been others that were decent but not outstanding, like Zalazney Nine Princes in Amber.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Unlike most of the posters so far, who seem to be discussing some other series by some other author.
I liked the Praxis. I like most of Williams' books. Why? He's a mutant. He never writes the same book twice, and he jumps freely between genres. Like cyberpunk? Read Hardwired. Want apocalypse fiction? Read the Rift.
I like not knowing what he's going to do next. The Praxis is the first book in a series, which Williams hasn't done previously. If it seems stilted and cliched so far, wait.
---------------
Vpered na Mars!