Flag in Exile

Lady Harrington is on exile. Not because of her fault of course, but when you do everything straight, it is guaranteed that you are not going to make everybody happy. So, she is on half-pay (meaning she is stripped from the command), and fortunately the there is a chance to fill in her office in Grayson. So, Grayson it is…

Now, she is involved with all the politics of Grayson. Even though the Masadan conflict is over, there is no guarantee at all that she will meet no opposition. Beside holding the office as a steadholder, she is also enlisted in the Grayson Navy (and it is complicated, because she also belongs to the Manticoran Navy). And she is given an admiral rank! The heat is on! The culture in Grayson is as misogynistic as ever, saved for some enlightened people.

I find that the Grayson part of the story is refreshing. Seeing how Weber described the fundamentalist way of thinking (in Grayson) really show us the reality today. When the book is published, the Oklahoma bombing happened. It rings a deeper meaning that what is written as fiction is novel actually happened in our real world.

One more important part in this novel is the ENGINEERING porn! Weber is getting serious with the structural engineering. If you have a slight understanding of mechanical engineering, it is surely interesting to see how the engineers of Grayson work! What a design, what an investigation!

I might be biased in reviewing this novel, because I enjoy the Grayson setting more the Manticoran setting. So I give this novel a 4 STARS.

 

The Lottery

This short story is published first in 1948, after the carnage of World War II, and it created havoc! Most of the reactions are dislike! Of course at that time they did not have facebook or goodreads. They simply wrote tho newspapers and magazines to voice their dislike.

Nowadays, I think, this short story will have less impact. First, because several other stories with similar theme are published. Second, the horror of World War II (and Vietnam War, for the case) has been long gone. Iraqi and the war against Taliban is still fresh in the memory, but I think the impact is a bit less compared to the major war.

SPOILER AHEAD!
I guess that the horror of the lottery is related to the drawing of lottery in conscription, when we send young man to die in the battlefield.

Compared to this short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas is much stronger. It does not end in the shocking plot, but really gives us food for thought. There is also one horror movie with similar theme,  Population 436, which I think is also better than this short story.

Of course most audience will see the resemblance of this short story with [book:The Hunger Games|2767052]. Just remember, it is much much older than The Hunger Games. Maybe Suzanne Collins is influenced by this, or maybe not.

Despite the original message of this story might be forgotten (irony, irony), the story actually is quite fun to read, especially for grade school reading. My 3 STARS ratings is only for older audience, but children will find this book very interesting.

 

 

Field of Dishonor

The first official conflict between Haven Republic and Manticore Kingdom is resolved with the victory on the Manticoran side. But the conflict is far from being concluded. The political situation in Haven only exacerbates the situation.

This time, there are no big scale battle fought, but the clandestine war is by no means less cruel, if not even crueler. The enmity between Harrington and Lord Pavel Young becomes worse. The rise of Lady Harrington’s career and the court-martial of Lord Young will tear both of them equally. Despite there are no space battle, actually I feel that this novel is more tense than the third novel: The Short Victorious War. And by all means, it is also better.

The political situation in Manticore Kingdom is also troublesome. Even though Manticore is a kingdom, it is a parliamentary monarchy, like the United Kingdom. The balance of power is delicate, and the majority led by the Centrist and Crown Loyalist is threatened. Compromise must be made. And as always (sigh), Honor Harrington is in the middle of the storm.

On the lighter side, she must get accustomed to her new role in the House of Lords, being a Countess. She is also a Steadholder of Grayson, a foreign nation, which makes thing even more complicated.

There are plenty of “events” in this book to serve as the climax. The road ahead is indeed hard to travel. Later on, as the title of the novel suggested, it will be a field of dishonor for Lady Harrington.

Final verdict: 4 STARS.

Foundation

This book is my first love to science fiction world (well, it has to compete head-to-head with Ender’s Game.

It begins with Hari Seldon, a great psychohistory, or sociologist cum mathematician in nowadays term. By using psychohistory, he predicts that the Empire is actually on decline. Nobody believes him because the Empire is as strong as ever. But Hari Seldon is true, because the law cannot be bent; it is as certain as the law of gravity. Therefore, he is going to tinker with the law by creating a seed of civilization during this dark time, to fasten the dark age, from thirty thousand years to a mere one thousand years. The seed is known as the Foundation.

It has many things that I loved from a science fiction novel. The first one is the idea. Imagine that you CAN PREDICT THE FUTURE (!) given you have enough data, which is ±75 billions of population, and you know the law governing the relation between human being. That is the wet dream (and holy grail) of any social scientist! It is far fetch from the truth of course, because one thing that made us human so unpredictable is the feedback loop. A stone is not being aware that it is being studied, so it will stay the same. But a human being KNOW that s/he is being studied, so s/he can give a different feedback, which mess all the result of the probing. Asimov beautifully overcame this complexity by removing the obstacle. To make the science of psychohistory reliable, he only need to remove all the “psychologist” so that the entire population of the Foundation is not being aware of the study.

The second is the progress of history itself. Asimov admitted openly that he was inspired by the book The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. But still, he is quite genuine in plotting the future history of the Foundation. I am dying to find out about the next Seldon crisis. It shocking and unpredictable. That is what this novel so interesting, even though the writing is quite dry, and there are almost no character development. That is perfectly OK, because the plot is not about the character! Caring about the character development is like caring about the fate of one drop of water while forgetting about the ocean!

Enough said, 5 stars.

Prince of Thorns

Well, maybe it is not so bad, but somehow I am in the mood for ravaging this novel.

Since the era of A Game of Thrones, after the era of The Lord of the Rings, the world of fantasy indeed has changed. The fantasy world became darker and more violent. We have several good ones: The Black Company (this one predates Game of Thrones), The Blade Itself, Gardens of the Moon, and The Lies of Locke Lamora. The defining line between the good guy and the bad guy is not so clear. Especially after the Game of Thrones HBO series became so popular, it looks like many fantasy writers will try to copy this kind of theme. Including this one.

Since the beginning of the novel, we are served with endless (and mindless violence). I don’t mind violence; the books listed above are among my favorite. But mindless violence does not serve me well. It is violence for the sake of violence, not for the sake of the plot or character building. There are almost no loveable character in this novel (except the Nuban).

The alternating between the current and the event four years earlier also does not serve the plot well. It is disrupting the flow of the story. I don’t mind a flash back, but the flash back used in this one does not amplify the story at all.

But I think the worst part is the world building. This is supposed to be the high point of this novel, because it looks like that the author worked so hard to make the world in this novel resembles our real world, after a nuclear holocaust, using his term the Day of a Thousand Sun, thousands of years after that. And yet, it failed. The writer should learned from A Canticle for Leibowitz. The world after the nuclear war in this novel is believable. It does not directly fall into a medieval world, but more like a Mad Max world. The writer should also learn from The Shadow of the Torturer. The allusions made in Gene Wolfe novel is witty, which require the best of mind to digest. In Prince of Thorns, the allusion is too direct. And the repeating reference to the classics such as Plato is not believable. Believe me, if our civilization fails, Plato (and all other classics) will be the first to disappear. It is proven already in our dark age in Europe, Plato and all of the Greek classics are saved only because it survived in the Arab world, in Arabic translation. Or some in the hand of the secluded monks, which actually resembles the plot in A Canticle for Leibowitz. In Prince of Thorn, it is just unbelievable. If they still read Plato, the civilization is still intact. It is much better if the writer simply made the world out of nowhere, without linking it to our future world.

I almost stopped reading this novel, if not for you, my reviewer readers (ha!) I might give this book a bit the benefit of doubt, and try (very hard) to finish this book, because I will only review the book that I finished reading.

Surely the author can write, but he simply wasted his talent in this novel. And for me this is the end of this series. There is no way I want to repeat the experience of reading this novel.

ONE STAR it is.