I think I’ve just given up and decided to attempt and catch up with David Weber’s Honor Harrington series. All the way up. That means I’m currently working on Ashes of Victory, and it’s impossible not to notice the books are getting longer as the series rolls on.
And in this case, it’s not just longer in page-length, but in exposition, political maneuvering, and copious droning. Compared to [Echoes of Honor(http://www.
And David Weber’s Honor Harrington universe marches on with Echoes of Honor, like an army of undead, unstoppable and thirsting for brains. This time, we get to follow several distinct story segments as Honor and her team struggle to take over Hades and ultimately escape. The action this time around is almost unrelenting, and probably more importantly, relevant to the current story and future engagements.
Weber has a thing for political intrigue, and of course it’s no stranger here.
When I’m reading multiple books simultaneously, it’s usually because I’ve relegated one to my “before bed” pile. Absolution Gap, the conclusion of Alastair Reynolds’s Revelation Space series, was one of those. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the longer books I’ve attacked in a couple months, and half an hour per night hardly pays quick dividends. Even worse, Reynolds’ writing style is copious and unrelenting; I felt every single one of those pages.
I took a break from the Honorverse for a while and dove into John Ringo again with the third book in his Posleen War series, When the Devil Dances. All in all, it was much different from the previous entry, and an enjoyable one, at that.
Part of the issue I had with Gust Front came primarily from the author’s propensity for excessively detailed military maneuvers. Given a map of the United States and an Axes and Allies game centered on US territory, one could easily plot out each action and counteraction for hours.
Lord, what have they done to poor Freddy Krueger? A reboot of this particular franchise had roughly unlimited potential. No more would they need to rely on self-referential humor and sight gags. It could finally be a gritty and disturbing jaunt into the human psyche, or at least a slasher leagues more engaging than Saw and its ilk. The choice of Jackie Earle Haley couldn’t have been more perfect for the role.
