The Core Dump

The Dragon Never Sleeps is prime Glen Cook—a huge, literally galaxy-spanning plot, gritty realism, and hastily sketched but interesting characters.

As with his Dread Empire series, Cook throws the reader right into the mess of things without much explanation, leaving it up to you to figure out what’s really going on, and introduces an army of characters and motivations without ado. The Dragon Never Sleeps is one of those novels you absolutely can not skim; it requires attention if it’s going to make any kind of sense.

It’s always great to see an author working in the genre resist the urge to stretch things out—in the hands of pretty much any other author, The Dragon Never Sleeps would have been at minimum three 800-page bricks, but Cook keeps it under 300 dense but rewarding pages.

Granted, Cook is a bit of an acquired taste, and anybody new to him should start out with the brilliant Black Company series, but for the fan this novel delivers.

Recommended.

Glen Cook is arguably best known for his Black Company series, which I think should be turned into an HBO mini series, but he has also written military Sci-Fi like the recently re-released Passage at Arms.

The premise of the novel is that humanity is at war with a mysterious race called the Ulat, and is losing. The last hope to turn the tide is a new kind of spaceship called a Climber, which can for all intents and purposes disappear from the enemy.

Yes, you guessed it, it’s a submarine.

Essentially, Passage at Arms is Das Boot in space—the same hard, gritty realism, and the same focus on the psychology of men under intense pressure.

The novel shows Glen Cook’s mastery of the realities of warfare and his unflinching look at the best and worst of humanity. It’s not a fun read, but it is gripping.

It’s a big, bad universe out there…

John Scalzi’s The Ghost Brigades is set in the same universe as the enjoyable Old Man’s War, but isn’t so much a sequel as a look from another angle.

As hinted in Old Man’s War, humanity has created a Special Forces troop of people who are force-grown, genetically altered clones of people who signed up for service but passed away before their enlistment. This of course raises some interesting ethical issues.

Scalzi writes with economy and restraint, letting the plot carry the novel instead of resorting to verbal pyrotechnics.

There are a lot of thought-provoking ideas embedded in The Ghost Brigades, and the novel passes them out without hitting you over the head. At its core, though, it’s fun space opera.

There are couple of nits to pick, like how the Evil Scientist motivations didn’t fully work (at least for me), and some of the differences in BrainPal use by “realborn” troops and the Special Forces seemed a bit hand wavy, but those things don’t impede enjoyment of the novel, which just like Old Man’s War almost eerily channels Heinlein (in a good way).

Old Man’s War

The Sundering: Dread Empire’s Fall continues the story begun in The Praxis (my review here) about the fall of the Shaa Empire.

As the title suggests, things are not going well for the empire.

Like its predecessor, The Sundering is pure and gleeful Space Opera, with a galaxy-spanning empire, huge space battles, and nefarious aliens.

Walter Jon Williams attempts and to some extent succeeds in drawing multifaceted portraits of both his protagonists and the society in which they operate, separating the series from run-of-the-mill Space Opera, but the time the novel spends on the political aspects of the empire’s falling apart, and the stagnation and corruption rampant among the highest levels of society, does slow it down a bit.

However, the action sequences are extremely well written and paced.

If you liked The Praxis, you’ll like The Sundering.

The Praxis

Dread Empire’s Fall: The Praxis is pure and unabashed Space Opera.

The concept is that a race of aliens called the Shaa have dominated and subjugated other species for millennia under the guise of their religion called The Praxis.

The first line of The Praxis reads: All that important is known. So, the Shaa are not exactly into new things, and the empire they have created, with a rigid caste system and merciless punishments for wrongdoers rots at the core as the Shaa die out.

It’s a nice setup.

Most of The Praxis is taken up with setting up the milieu and introducing the major characters, and moves fairly slowly. Walter Jon Williams writes clearly and economically, and really shines in the action sequences, which are taut and tense.

All in all, if you like Space Opera, The Praxis will keep your interest.

For Those Who Fell is the sixth book in William C. Dietz’s Legion of the Damned series, and it continues the series with aplomb.

If you’re a fan of the series, it’s well worth reading, although it’s definitely not a place to start. While technically a free-standing novel, unless you’ve read the previous installments, it’s hard to get into the Legion of the Damned universe.

With Old Man’s War, John Scalzi picks up Heinlein’s fallen mantle and runs with it†—the basic premise is that in the future humanity has spread out from Earth and has met other alien races, a surprising amount of whom are in no way interested in sharing the galaxy, and thus there is war; old people are given the option of joining the army, with rumors floating around that there is a means to rejuvenate these older people and get them into fighting shape…

Apart from cranking up the sex and gore, Scalzi manages to channel Heinlein to an almost eerie degree. If you’re a fan of Heinlein—or even if you were when you were a teenager—Old Man’s War is a fun romp, and one that leaves you wanting more.

Scalzi also operates an enjoyable blog that is worth adding to your feed reader.

†Yeah, that put a strange image in my head too.

John Ringo’s Gust Front is the follow-up to A Hymn Before Battle and continues the tale of aggression by the Posleen horde. While the action in A Hymn Before Battle took place on other planets, in Gust Front the Posleen land on a woefully ill-prepared Earth.

While on one level the novel is fairly typical military science fiction with lots of big guns and well-crafted battle scenes, Ringo excels at fleshing out his characters and bringing the human factor and cost of armed conflict into focus.

Gust Front is eminently readable and fast-paced, with a strong and engaging plot. If you like military science fiction, you’ll like Gust Front.

William C. Dietz’s Deathday and Earthrise are actually one novel split off into two volumes, so they will be reviewed together here.

A side note to the publisher: Would it be that hard to make it clear on the covers that these two books are in fact one? From just looking at the books, you’d think they are two separate novels from the same author. Not so. Deathday ends in mid-action, so if you care about the story, you have no choice but to pony up another $7.99 for Earthrise. Also, the proofreading was unusually sloppy on the editions linked to above: They’re rife with typos and punctuation errors, which is inexcusable.

The basic plot of the duology is that the Saurons, a race of bug-like sentients with more than a little bit of fascist tendencies, attack Earth and lay waste to most of the planet, wiping out the military and enslaving the surviving humans to use as a slave labor for building elaborate temples. Naturally, a human resistance emerges and fights back.

Dietz does a good job of fleshing out the somewhat hackneyed cast of characters and putting a good deal of internal tension in the resistance movement, including a prominent showing by a gang of nuttier-than-usual white supremacists.

Deathday and Earthrise aren’t bad, per se, but they are far from Dietz’s usual standards, and feel mostly tired. Still, they’re competent and have their bright moments. Decent airplane reading.

Listening To: Stream from Groove Salad

During my extended bout with the flu, I’ve been using my trusty Palm and the Baen Free Library to help take the edge off the virus invasion.

Most of Baen’s catalog consists of competent military SF with some fantasy thrown in for good measure. While most of the books were highly enjoyable, and I did intend to post reviews of them, the virus host threw that idea into coulda shoulda land. So now that I’m feeling better, it’s time to make up for it; the following is a series of mini reviews.

On Basilisk Station by David Weber: The first installment in the Honor Harrington series. Likable protagonist, well put-together universe, but suffers a bit from the über-greatness of Honor Harrington. Her only flaw is that she sometimes doubts herself (and apparently she had some problems with math at the Academy)–but apart from that, Honor is godlike, which gets a bit stale.

The Honor of the Queen by David Weber: The second installment in the Honor Harrington series. Better than On Basilisk Station–the universe feels a bit more “lived-in,” and the interactions between Honor and the sexist pigs of Grayson yields some fun moments. Bonus points for letting her sense of duty seem a bit creepily compulsive at times.

The Apocalypse Troll by David Weber: Didn’t make it through this one. Something about time travel completely turns me off, and when the characters start talking quantum mumble mumble to make it seem “scientific,” well, bah. Apart from that, the characters are a bit shop worn, and while the Trolls are a pretty cool idea, it just seems that the human protagonists understand their twisted mentality too well.

Mutineer’s Moon by David Weber: Really digging the concept in this one. I’m not going to spoil it, but it’s a nifty idea. And there are lots of cyberpunk-y body enhancements going on. You can never go wrong with body enhancements. First in a series, so it ends mid-action. You can tell this is an earlier work, since while the battle sequences work well, the characterizations are flimsy and the embedded love story is absolutely cringe-worthy.

Oath of Swords by David Weber: Weber detours into fantasy and does a credible job of it. Not great but solid. It’s always good to see an author do something interesting with the trolls, dwarves, and elves concept.

The War God’s Own by David Weber: The follow-up to Oath of Swords follows the same characters as they delve deeper into the history of their world. Weber feels a bit more comfortable in the universe he’s created in this one, but of course, it won’t make any sense unless you’ve read the first installment.

Mother of Demons by Eric Flint: Good concept where a human colony ship is shipwrecked on a planet inhabited by interesting and–well, alien–aliens. Features a good, tight plot, fast-paced writing and interesting ideas.

A Hymn Before Battle by John Ringo: Hard military SF in the grand old tradition, with lots of heavy weaponry and pretty well drawn characters.