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by WITTGENSTEIN 05/16/2011, 5:05pm PDT |
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The Succession "series" (really two books that should be one) is good sci-fi. Better than your usual Baen right-wing schlock. The characters are a bit flat, a lesbian relationship between a machine-worshipping amazon commando and some nobody girl with assburgers comes out of nowhere, and you can see the twist coming far before it's revealed at the end of the book. Also I felt it really dragged around the first part of the second book where about 100 pages is devoted to a physics-realistic space battle. I don't know why nerds sperg out over a Newtonian-realistic space fight but it makes for bad gameplay and bad book-reading. I think what he does best is his own interpretation of how tech will evolve beyond the next couple of centuries. The tech has that feel of Dune-level advancement, where things have gone full circle and people live like kings with invisible technology aiding them. In a market mainly dominated by Baen's right wing libertarian fantasies written by angry super death marines and batshit crazy Colonel Kurtzes, it's a breath of fresh air to Space Opera.
The Leviathan series is World War I with British bio-mechanically augmented war machines (airship whales) versus Prussian steampunk humanoid robots and land-battleships that walk on six legs. After 75 pages I'm already hooked, and it's full of illustrations to show what the author's trying to describe. At ages 13 and up though it's a Harry Potter-like guilty pleasure. Read it on a e-reader so nobody realizes you're reading shit for 7th graders. I have yet to see any battles written in it but I wonder if a young adult book is up to the task of not trivializing the 2nd bloodiest conflict of the 20th century. |
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