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It is explicitly mentioned in this book that Benjamin Mayhew and his father were educated off-world. It is not a retcon.
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Mar 10, 2020 02:05
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Graysons traveling to other systems isn't the only way they could have been exposed to outside technology. This isn't a first contact situation; Grayson and Manticore are both aware of and know a little about each other, which means that Grayson has had prior encounters with other interstellar travelers. That would be enough to give a high military official an idea of how technically behind his forces are, even if only an intellectual and second-hand one. Regarding the # of ships passage, all I can say is it's always been clear to me that Honor was impressed by the scale of Grayson's activity relative to their technological inferiority. Reading the final sentence as you're suggesting feels like it requires ignoring the context of the rest of the paragraph.
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Mar 10, 2020 02:10
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Gnoman posted:It is explicitly mentioned in this book that Benjamin Mayhew and his father were educated off-world. It is not a retcon. It may be mentioned in this book, but the Graysons are written very wrongly with that in mind. Since the start of the book especially portrays them as intensely isolated, to the point that their high admiral only intellectually knows about women not being pure babymakers or Sunday School Teachers in other polities, but have enough contact that they trust other polities enough to educate their in-all-but-name King and crown prince. Anshu posted:Graysons traveling to other systems isn't the only way they could have been exposed to outside technology. This isn't a first contact situation; Grayson and Manticore are both aware of and know a little about each other, which means that Grayson has had prior encounters with other interstellar travelers. That would be enough to give a high military official an idea of how technically behind his forces are, even if only an intellectual and second-hand one. Sure, I can accept them knowing that intellectually they are behind, but mentally referring to their present-day equipment as 'old-fashioned' rings false. It's NOT old-fashioned for them. Like if we met aliens and found out they had super advanced technology, we would not be referring to our current modern TVs as 'old-fashioned' as a result. If this was from a Manticorean point of view it'd be entirely fine, which goes back to my complaints that everyone has the same voice and talks the same except for the religious bad guys. Kchama fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 02:23
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Kchama posted:
You're misreading this, I think. This isn't the first time Wolcott's given the loyalty toast, it is the first time she's done so at such a large gathering of superior officers. "The proper place to learn one's duties is quote:Blah blah blah blah Houseman gets owned who cares. He's completely unimportant except as an object of ridicule. It's a writing device Weber loves that I hate. He should knock it the gently caress off. It is possible that you have never dealt with a Houseman in real life. If this is the case, you are very, very lucky. He's an ivory-tower "expert" who shoves everything into his preferred ideological framework and condemns anyone who does not view things exactly the same way. I've dealt with many of them in professional life - the common incarnation in civilian life is the guy with an MBA who gets a manager's job and rearranges the entire worksite without any regard as to why things were set up that way in the first place, crippling the company until one of his superiors comes in and steps on him. On a grander scale, (and a directly relevant historical parallel), there were many pundits on both sides of the ideological spectrum who decried Churchill and Roosevelt as warmongers when Britain and America began armament programs to counter Hitler - not necessarily because they wanted Hitler to win, but because anyone building weapons must want to use them for conquest. quote:"No we haven't told the stupid chauvinists that we have female personnel, much less female officers, because they're a proud, touchy lot and it would be disrespectful to tell them. That's why we're sending a followup fleet with a female commander to explicitly rub it in their face." Had they explicitly said something on the order of "We believe in female equality, and make no distinctions in the roles of men and women. Therefore, unlike you, we have female officers in our military including ship and fleet commands.", it would be virtually certain that the Graysons would hear something along the lines of "you backwards imbeciles" appended to it. There's no way to bring up the point directly without it coming off as a condescending insult. Instead, they submitted the complete personnel lists for the ships that were being sent. Since the Grayson cultural background is North American, and they've preserved most of the linguistic elements of that background, anyone paying attention would know that "Honor", Alice", "Carolyn", "Mercedes", and others are women's names. This should have informed the Graysons that a woman was in command, without rubbing the difference in their faces or catering to their bigotry. quote:"Let's Be About It" is Honor's catch phrase basically. I guess it's to make her sound cool or something. It's boring as poo poo. By itself, "Let's be about it." is really no different that Jean Luc Picard's "Make it so". The really obnoxious bit is later in the series when other characters not only adopt the phrase, but pointedly call out that they are doing it. Nobody except Honor herself can ever use it without adding "As Captain Harrington would say" in front of it, which is annoying as hell. Kchama posted:
This isn't aliens arriving with super-advanced technology. It's a first-world nation visiting a third-world one. The Graysons are perfectly aware of what the state of the art in technology is, because the wider world is not wholly unknown to them. They know exactly how out of date their tech is. They know they are in a significantly inferior position in this encounter. This is one of the reasons that the Manticoran aid is called a "loan" when it is really an outright gift - Manticore is trying not to insult somebody that they are seeking an alliance with.
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Mar 10, 2020 05:07
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Gnoman posted:You're misreading this, I think. This isn't the first time Wolcott's given the loyalty toast, it is the first time she's done so at such a large gathering of superior officers. "The proper place to learn one's duties is quote:It is possible that you have never dealt with a Houseman in real life. If this is the case, you are very, very lucky. He's an ivory-tower "expert" who shoves everything into his preferred ideological framework and condemns anyone who does not view things exactly the same way. quote:Had they explicitly said something on the order of "We believe in female equality, and make no distinctions in the roles of men and women. Therefore, unlike you, we have female officers in our military including ship and fleet commands.", it would be virtually certain that the Graysons would hear something along the lines of "you backwards imbeciles" appended to it. There's no way to bring up the point directly without it coming off as a condescending insult. I was more getting at that they make a point that they're doing all that stuff you said not to be an insult, which is good! But then they basically also said that the reason why they're SPECIFICALLY sending Honor is to be a shock to them, which is kind of against the "We're treating them subtly without forcing it in their face" completely. This is why I called them a pile of idiots. I actually feel the "just pretend it's normal and don't say anything" is a way better idea rather than make a big show with Honor being the commander, and trying to do both doesn't strike me as very good. quote:By itself, "Let's be about it." is really no different that Jean Luc Picard's "Make it so". The really obnoxious bit is later in the series when other characters not only adopt the phrase, but pointedly call out that they are doing it. Nobody except Honor herself can ever use it without adding "As Captain Harrington would say" in front of it, which is annoying as hell. And yeah nobody else uses it. quote:This isn't aliens arriving with super-advanced technology. It's a first-world nation visiting a third-world one. The Graysons are perfectly aware of what the state of the art in technology is, because the wider world is not wholly unknown to them. They know exactly how out of date their tech is. They know they are in a significantly inferior position in this encounter. This is one of the reasons that the Manticoran aid is called a "loan" when it is really an outright gift - Manticore is trying not to insult somebody that they are seeking an alliance with. I was more getting at that you wouldn't look at your current tech and think it's 'old-fashioned' because you're being visited by something with more advanced tech. You'd call it OUTDATED because it is, but it wouldn't be old-fashioned to a Grayson's high admiral who doesn't have experience outside of Grayson. I'd buy the Benjamins thinking it since they grew up on Earth and Beowulf, but it's a very wrong word for Yanakov to use. Also 'gift', it's super a bribe. Kchama fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Mar 10, 2020 |
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Mar 10, 2020 07:08
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Kchama posted:Maybe, but it's pretty open to my misreading if so, because it's a weird thing to say if you're actually learning your duties elsewhere and just putting what you learned into practice for reals on duty. This is an attitude I've seen in pretty much every military-focused work I've read - be it fiction or memoir. Weber's pretty openly invoking a lot of long-standing tropes and archetypes and expecting you to simply recognize them. Some of the other things you've criticized are of similar origin - Harkness and Tremaine, for example, aren't supposed to be "wacky", they're the Stolid Noncom who Knows When To Bend The Rules and the Young Officer Who Is Taken Under The Stolid Noncom's Wing. I suspect this is one of those things that depend a lot on what you've read before. quote:I was more getting at that they make a point that they're doing all that stuff you said not to be an insult, which is good! But then they basically also said that the reason why they're SPECIFICALLY sending Honor is to be a shock to them, which is kind of against the "We're treating them subtly without forcing it in their face" completely. This is why I called them a pile of idiots. I actually feel the "just pretend it's normal and don't say anything" is a way better idea rather than make a big show with Honor being the commander, and trying to do both doesn't strike me as very good. If you had a planet identical to Grayson except without the backwards views on women, Honor would be a pretty solid choice for the command - she's in command of one of your newest and most impressive ships, she's recently been very publicly decorated for valor, and she's got a long-standing working relationship with the special envoy being sent. Picking somebody else for the command solely because she's not a man would be akin to ensuring that the commander of a US or British naval mission to 1980s South Africa was white. Potentially justifiable, but still a major concession to local prejudice, and one which would cause backlash if that reasoning was made public. The approach used - "we're not going to rub your face in it by calling it out, but we aren't changing at all to suit you - you want to work with us, get used to how we do things" is not necessarily the best one, but I can easily see almost any nation taking it.
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Mar 10, 2020 07:24
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Gnoman posted:This is an attitude I've seen in pretty much every military-focused work I've read - be it fiction or memoir. Weber's pretty openly invoking a lot of long-standing tropes and archetypes and expecting you to simply recognize them. Some of the other things you've criticized are of similar origin - Harkness and Tremaine, for example, aren't supposed to be "wacky", they're the Stolid Noncom who Knows When To Bend The Rules and the Young Officer Who Is Taken Under The Stolid Noncom's Wing. I suspect this is one of those things that depend a lot on what you've read before. Though either way Harkness and Tremaine come off as a wacky duo. quote:If you had a planet identical to Grayson except without the backwards views on women, Honor would be a pretty solid choice for the command - she's in command of one of your newest and most impressive ships, she's recently been very publicly decorated for valor, and she's got a long-standing working relationship with the special envoy being sent. I'm mostly calling them idiots because they basically changed things to rub it in their face, as the gist of the earlier conversation is that they SPECIFICALLY picked Honor BECAUSE she was a woman, not because she just happened to be the very best person for the job. If it had been just like the "Oh we just gave them what we'd do normally like with the crew manifests we provided", I wouldn't have seen anything to complain about, but picking someone just to force it in their face goes against their previous strategy.
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Mar 10, 2020 07:30
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Kchama posted:I'm going to keep posting these until someone reads them! I have read every word you've posted in this thread, friend. I can no longer tell if I hate you or myself more.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:45
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grassy gnoll posted:I have read every word you've posted in this thread, friend. I can no longer tell if I hate you or myself more.
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Mar 10, 2020 20:52
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Kchama posted:If it had been just like the "Oh we just gave them what we'd do normally like with the crew manifests we provided", I wouldn't have seen anything to complain about, but picking someone just to force it in their face goes against their previous strategy. The goal wasn't to avoid forcing the issue, the goal was to avoid forcing the issue in a way that could be interpreted as "Listen up you backwards hicks. We have women serving in our military, because we aren't a pack of uneducated yokels." They wanted to make them acknowledge that they have women in the military, so instead of making a big deal about it they just sent a commanding officer who was a woman. This doesn't seem like a terrible idea to me.
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Mar 10, 2020 22:25
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grassy gnoll posted:I have read every word you've posted in this thread, friend. I can no longer tell if I hate you or myself more. Let the hate FLOW through you! Khizan posted:The goal wasn't to avoid forcing the issue, the goal was to avoid forcing the issue in a way that could be interpreted as "Listen up you backwards hicks. We have women serving in our military, because we aren't a pack of uneducated yokels." As I was saying, pick one or the other. Do you do your best to do it passively like they did, or do you just put it front and center like intentionally making your convoy commander a woman. If you do the latter you don't really need to focus or care about the former. They know.
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Mar 11, 2020 00:41
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Cross posting from the Kindle Unlimited thread to show you there is worse milsf than Weber: Had a real KINDLE UNLIMITED  moment today. I've run out of books from my list of mediocre or better authors so I took a chance on some recommendations from the sci fi category. Was reading through the first one, wasn't great but at least the spelling and grammar were correct. Then I come across this passage:"The Ember War by Richard Fox posted:When he was a boy, my grandfather lived in Stockholm. He and his family were there when the Muslims declared the city theirs. They were poor, and didn't have the money to pay the non-believer tax and wouldn't convert to Islam, so the Muslims enslaved them all. They murdered my great-grandfather. My great-grandmother didn't last much longer. Wish someone in the reviews had mentioned the ridiculous bigotry so I didn't waste an hour on that one, but I guess that's just sort of generally assumed with milsf.
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Mar 11, 2020 01:34
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Almost every argument I have with the Let's Read Honor Harrington posts Gnoman has already made, especially the open evoking of long standing genre mil-fiction tropes. Harry Harrison's outright mocking of those tropes while still using them in his BILL THE GALACTIC series is why I enjoy the BILL series and 90% of Harry Harrison's writing so much. Bill the Galactic Hero book 2 (Planet of Robot Slaves) has some very true and on-point mil references. Opening paragraph of the book: "BILL WAS NOT HAPPY IN HIS WORK. HE REALLY should have been since, like most things military, it required little or no intelligence. Just well-conditioned reflexes. Which reflexes now tickled his brain with a reminder that the shuffle of recruit footsteps was growing very dim." page 3: selection and naming process for US military bases. "There were no minerals worth digging, no land worth planting, no resources worth exploiting. In other words the perfect planet to turn into a military base. This had been done, at great and overpriced expense, until the giant island-continent in the boiling, iceberg filled sea, was a single great military establishment. Fort Grundgy, named after the galaxy-famous Commander Merda Grundgy. He was famous for absolutely nothing other than the fact that he had expired of terminal hemorrhoids from overeating. But since he was the Emperor’s granduncle his name would be ever honored." Gnoman, you're either Napoleon or Casear in the "Laughing from the Gallery" image I originally rediscovered/repurposed for this thread, whichever one you prefer. Other good thread reaction pics are https://www.loc.gov/item/2011645752/ or https://www.loc.gov/item/2011645950/ or https://www.loc.gov/item/2011647615/ quantumfoam fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Mar 11, 2020 |
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Mar 11, 2020 05:47
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jng2058 posted:I dunno how many good ones there are. If anyone finds one, let me know. The Starfire books "In Death Ground" and "The Shiva Option" by Weber and White are adequate, bordering on pretty good. The rest of the books in the series, not so much, though I haven't read most of the ones that White's done on his own after Weber left for bigger and better things. Maybe they get better? There's also the Dread Empire's Fall series by Walter Jon Williams. quantumfoam posted:Bill the Galactic Hero book 2 (Planet of Robot Slaves) has some very true and on-point mil references. Army creates cyborg that can become homeless alcoholic 200 times faster than human counterparts quote:“On his first day, CHIPI was productive for about two hours, which is more than we get out of most colonels,” Burmeister said. “But then his artificial intelligence algorithms rapidly processed that his work was pointless, the leadership sucked, and being sidelined out of his job field, his prospects for promotion were zero.”
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Mar 11, 2020 07:18
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Duffelblog is always worth a Sensible Chuckle (Danger 5 reference) anytime I get reminded about it. Then I immediately forget it exists seconds later like with Terminal Lance. https://youtu.be/PXc_gB7AH7A For the person (Stereo) looking for " other good space navy/battle type series", there is a 20 or 25 page segment in one of Harry Harrison's serious-er scifi-series where a Weberian all-missile offense/defense space fleet gets wrecked by 2 railgun rebel-freighters firing from over 2 AU away. Literal waves and waves of iron cannonballs broadsides (it gets explained in-book) from 2+ AU out .
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Mar 12, 2020 00:38
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 Just dropping this here.
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Mar 14, 2020 03:11
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 Non-attractive Honor Harrington circa On Basilisk Station. New chapter eventually. Maybe tonight. I'm working, okay.
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Mar 16, 2020 02:31
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Do you also poo poo on JK Rowling because Emma Watson is prettier than Hermione is supposed to be?
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Mar 16, 2020 03:26
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Anshu posted:Do you also poo poo on JK Rowling because Emma Watson is prettier than Hermione is supposed to be? No, why should I? Real-life actors is a different kettle of fish anyways. It has nothing to do with anything at all because the author doesn't have any bit of creative over something like that. He has a lot more creative control over his own writing, and people who draw Honor. Now, he has less control over drawings of Honor than he does his own work, but that work isn't off to how she's describe and depicted literally everywhere else. What makes the comic book funny isn't that Honor is hot when she's not suppose to be. It's that everything, even Weber's own words, is that she's suppose to be super hot even in On Basilisk Station. But at the same time the books pretend she's not suppose to be pretty then anyways. But also, not pretty, but 'beyond pretty', even. EDIT: Honestly looking at it, it's closer to her actual description circa HH1 than the actual book cover art manages, considering it more accurately depicts her as a pale Asian. She reminds me of a much more interesting starship captain, thinking about it...  Kchama fucked around with this message at 04:52 on Mar 16, 2020 |
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Mar 16, 2020 04:34
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Kchama posted:No, why should I? Real-life actors is a different kettle of fish anyways. It has nothing to do with anything at all because the author doesn't have any bit of creative over something like that. He has a lot more creative control over his own writing, and people who draw Honor. Now, he has less control over drawings of Honor than he does his own work, but that work isn't off to how she's describe and depicted literally everywhere else. There's also the Japanese edition covers.  
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Mar 16, 2020 06:26
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yes, make the treecat as cute as possible, right before it rips the faces off a bunch of dudes
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Mar 16, 2020 06:43
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C.M. Kruger posted:There's also the Japanese edition covers. I gotta admit: Those covers loving rule. The Tales of Honor cover isn't terrible either, but the Japanese ones completely blow it away.
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Mar 16, 2020 09:16
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Kchama posted:I gotta admit: Those covers loving rule. The Tales of Honor cover isn't terrible either, but the Japanese ones completely blow it away. For once the Japanese tendency to make everyone look like a high schooler is actually accurate to the source material
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Mar 16, 2020 17:43
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blackmongoose posted:For once the Japanese tendency to make everyone look like a high schooler is actually accurate to the source material She actually probably looks somewhat older than she's suppose to, lol. But really, they're fantastic covers. Baen's stuff is hot garbage. Not even in comparison. It just is. EDIT: Also if people want to know why updates have been scarce, I got curious and read ahead past where I had last read and... A Rising Thunder is the most boring book in history. And thus, I despaired. Seriously, it doesn't even have any action scenes. It cuts away from any battle the moment the shooting starts, and the rest of the book is all meetings. Kchama fucked around with this message at 18:32 on Mar 16, 2020 |
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Mar 16, 2020 18:27
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That's Eric Flint's fault for screwing up the timeline.
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Mar 16, 2020 18:57
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Kchama posted:EDIT: Also if people want to know why updates have been scarce, I got curious and read ahead past where I had last read and... A Rising Thunder is the most boring book in history. Yeah, it was clear Weber had checked out when he stopped writing even the battle scenes. The next and last book, Uncompromising Honor, is even worse about this and is a very disappointing read even if you're expecting disappointment. But it does at least conclude the main plot, albeit in a very lazy way. Uncompromising Honor also includes the most unintentionally funny thing in the series, and it relates to the constant boring meetings all the characters keep having. I think I've mentioned it here before. It's like a comedy sketch except Weber definitely didn't intend it that way. The Solarian intelligence agent trying to track down Mesan infiltrators in his government actually finds one, and discovers that the nanotech they're carrying kills them as soon as their cover is blown. What follows is a scene where he calls in every high-ranking officer he knows for meetings, pretends to arrest them, and sees which ones drop dead. They throw the bodies down a garbage chute and repeat until all the spies are gone.
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Mar 16, 2020 19:11
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To be fair, authors apparently have very little control over the covers to their books. I remember reading Charles Stross' epic rant about what happened with the initial cover to Saturn's Children. That was a pretty successful author with a publisher who were putting serious effort into a cover picture, it was a pretty good depiction of the main character, somebody who had actually read the book had commissioned that image. But it was, uhh, an uncanny valley cheesecake horror show inclined to make people embarrassed to be seen with the novel?
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Mar 16, 2020 19:11
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Kchama posted:She actually probably looks somewhat older than she's suppose to, lol. But really, they're fantastic covers. Baen's stuff is hot garbage. There's a reason my Safehold let's read was going to stop after book 1.
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Mar 16, 2020 19:23
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Gnoman posted:That's Eric Flint's fault for screwing up the timeline. That's not an excuse, you can just let the enemy win a couple times to force the good guys to retreat and regroup. Then you have battles aplenty to put your boring meetings inbetween. 
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Mar 16, 2020 19:33
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If we're talking covers, I will say, despite the changes to the text, the Animorphs reprint covers are very good. If you tilt the book left to right the character changes to an animal.
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Mar 16, 2020 20:36
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Patrat posted:To be fair, authors apparently have very little control over the covers to their books. I remember reading Charles Stross' epic rant about what happened with the initial cover to Saturn's Children. Oh yeah I know. The Baen covers being hot garbage are super not his fault. It's just amusing when you put the much better comic book covers and the Japanese covers along-side of them just how awful they are. SardonicTyrant posted:If we're talking covers, I will say, despite the changes to the text, the Animorphs reprint covers are very good. If you tilt the book left to right the character changes to an animal. I checked out the new Animorph covers and yeah I agree, they're good. FuturePastNow posted:Yeah, it was clear Weber had checked out when he stopped writing even the battle scenes. The next and last book, Uncompromising Honor, is even worse about this and is a very disappointing read even if you're expecting disappointment. But it does at least conclude the main plot, albeit in a very lazy way. Well at least I can look forward to one funny seen in it. I have actually heard some things about Uncompromising Honor that uhh... Gnoman posted:That's Eric Flint's fault for screwing up the timeline. I can't completely blame Eric Flint for. Though gently caress Eric Flint as the books he wrote are actually worse than Weber's and are all about his stupid self-insert superspies who I could not give a flying gently caress about. As much as I complain about the Honor worship, she is far less annoying. Namely that Weber can't write the Solarian League worth a drat. Though, it seems like his ability to write at all has died. He's reprinted entire chapters in multiple books. Just figure out how to write exposition for gently caress's sake! You do it so much how are you so bad at it?
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Mar 16, 2020 22:43
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Kchama posted:He's reprinted entire chapters in multiple books. That's also Eric Flint's fault. Flint screwing up the timeline is the only reason the story branches into three lines in the first place (the entire Saganimi/Shadows subseries exists only because Weber suddenly needed to develop the Mesa/Solarian plot far ahead of schedule), and he had no way to control what order you read in, so certain key scenes had to be in both series. Granted, he could have just given a summary, but that could easily have felt disjointed if you read them in the wrong order. If nothing else, it goes a long way toward locking down the relative chronology, which is otherwise something Weber is extremely bad at.
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Mar 16, 2020 23:37
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Gnoman posted:That's also Eric Flint's fault. Flint screwing up the timeline is the only reason the story branches into three lines in the first place (the entire Saganimi/Shadows subseries exists only because Weber suddenly needed to develop the Mesa/Solarian plot far ahead of schedule), and he had no way to control what order you read in, so certain key scenes had to be in both series. The problem is that this wasn't just reposting the one scene in two different spinoffs and a main book. This was originally from the previous book, and got reposted here! Which means that time seems to be going BACKWARDS in the book. Negative things are going on! And it's not even a necessary scene. Aside from Honor being in it, the previous chapters in the book all relayed pretty much the same information. This just had Honor talking about said information.
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Mar 17, 2020 02:27
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Yeah it wasn't the same scene posted in a Weber book and a Flint book, it was the same scene in two consecutive Weber books. Even in context it was dumb as hell.
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Mar 17, 2020 03:57
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FuturePastNow posted:Yeah it wasn't the same scene posted in a Weber book and a Flint book, it was the same scene in two consecutive Weber books. Even in context it was dumb as hell. The only scene I remember being repeated verbatim is Gold Peak's interview with Pritchart, which was in the main sequence and the Shadows series. It was majorly plot relevant in both, and it would have been awkward as hell trying to summarize it in either. The only reason the Shadows series exists is because Flint jumped the timeline. If there's another such scene I've forgotten, it probably is just a writing error.
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Mar 17, 2020 04:14
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Gnoman posted:The only scene I remember being repeated verbatim is Gold Peak's interview with Pritchart, which was in the main sequence and the Shadows series. It was majorly plot relevant in both, and it would have been awkward as hell trying to summarize it in either. The only reason the Shadows series exists is because Flint jumped the timeline. If there's another such scene I've forgotten, it probably is just a writing error. The one I'm thinking of is the 10th chapter in A Rising Thunder, where Honor has a meeting with the leaders of Grayson, Manticore, and Haven and they are all fitted with their new Treecats. Or that happens after I forget. But they just talk about how Mesa are actually the bad guys, which is something the book hammers in without needing to reprint the exact same scene. It's a reprint from an identical, to the word, scene in Mission Of Honor.
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Mar 17, 2020 04:27
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Kchama posted:The one I'm thinking of is the 10th chapter in A Rising Thunder, where Honor has a meeting with the leaders of Grayson, Manticore, and Haven and they are all fitted with their new Treecats. Or that happens after I forget. But they just talk about how Mesa are actually the bad guys, which is something the book hammers in without needing to reprint the exact same scene. You're right - I'd completely forgotten that was duplicated, and A Rising Thunder is marketed as being part of the main sequence even if it is much more of a Shadows book in focus. There really is no good excuse for that, unless it is purely to give a firm fix on the relative time compared to the Solarian fleet movements.
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Mar 17, 2020 04:34
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My main problem with Uncomprising Honor, apart from the incredible dullness, I started skimming almost immediately is that there's no good reason why the resolution at the end can't happen at the books start. They have an invincible super-fleet, just drive over to SOL and dictate terms from orbit day 1.
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Mar 17, 2020 10:40
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I think it's a testament to how much Weber & Co. dropped the ball that I went from "Oh boy they're going to kick the poo poo out of the Sollies!" to "I could not give a single gently caress" over the span of just a few books.
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Mar 17, 2020 15:47
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Radio Free Kobold posted:" over the span of just a few books. I think that right there is the problem. Weber just can’t have a plot done in one book if he can do it in eight. It’s why I gave up on safehold, that poo poo was just so stretched out into too many, too-long books.
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Mar 17, 2020 15:58
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