In my notes on “A Rising Thunder,” the volume preceding this one, I stated “I felt Weber had regained his knack for wrapping most of his info-dumping up in good little action scenes.” Well I guess that proved to be too much bother for him. In this final (I hope) episode of the battle with the Solarian League there are a handful of good fleet battles, good so long as you don’t mind the usual interminable info dumps on weaponry tech specs telling you why, no matter what the odds, the Manty fleet is about to wipe out yet another enemy fleet, or are at least happy to skim them. However, other that handful (and it is no more than a small handful) there is no action. None. And by that I don’t mean no more battles, I mean no movement whatsoever. Every remaining scene in the book is a meeting with dialogue (and massive passages of internal thought) set in meetings across desks, dinner tables, restaurant/café tables, sitting in oh so comfortable armchairs, even sitting on the command bridge of star ships (with nothing else happening) and just occasionally conversations whilst walking somewhere (sorry Mr Weber, I guess that is what I should be calling action).
The battle scenes (with info dumps suitably skimmed) were 4 stars but the rest of the 900 pages were long drawn out info dumps or maybe fictional history lessons, camouflaged as dialogue and are only worth 2 stars (and I’m being generous). And those info dumps probably comprised at least 90%, probably a lot more, of the text of the book. So I’m giving 3 stars and, again, I’m being generous.
Oh and just what is it with Weber and smiles? Every other smile in the book seems to be like a hexapuma or shark or some other overused simile.
I’m sure there are at least another one or two books required to wrap up the Mesan Alignment but those will almost certainly be written by Eric Flint (with maybe a little direction from Weber so his name can appear on the cover) and sadly Flint’s writing is considerably worse than Weber’s and certainly a lot more pulpy. Will I read them? Even though I can be a terrible completionist I really don’t know.
3/5 stars
The battle scenes (with info dumps suitably skimmed) were 4 stars but the rest of the 900 pages were long drawn out info dumps or maybe fictional history lessons, camouflaged as dialogue and are only worth 2 stars (and I’m being generous). And those info dumps probably comprised at least 90%, probably a lot more, of the text of the book. So I’m giving 3 stars and, again, I’m being generous.
Oh and just what is it with Weber and smiles? Every other smile in the book seems to be like a hexapuma or shark or some other overused simile.
I’m sure there are at least another one or two books required to wrap up the Mesan Alignment but those will almost certainly be written by Eric Flint (with maybe a little direction from Weber so his name can appear on the cover) and sadly Flint’s writing is considerably worse than Weber’s and certainly a lot more pulpy. Will I read them? Even though I can be a terrible completionist I really don’t know.
3/5 stars
