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ammbooks's review
5.0
So hard to decide which character I like the most. Lady Mundy or Hogg. Another great story for the Sissie's crew
rachel_from_cambridge's review
3.0
This seemed to spend the 1st 50 pages or so saying again & again how Adele / Tovera see the world differently - by this point in the series I have got the point.
After that though the story picked up well.
The events actually follow on fairly closely from the previous book - it would of been better if I'd read that one more recently.
After that though the story picked up well.
The events actually follow on fairly closely from the previous book - it would of been better if I'd read that one more recently.
brettt's review against another edition
3.0
David Drake gave modern military science fiction a kickstart in 1979 with his series of short stories about a 30th century mercenary unit called "Hammer's Slammers." The collected edition of those stories by that name was his first published book and he's more or less never looked back. In 1998, he turned his military experience to space opera with With the Lightnings, the first of what are now nine novels pairing spaceship captain Daniel Leary with intelligence officer Adele Mundy. The pair have saved the Republic of Cinnabar star nation from defeat or destruction several times over.
In The Road of Danger, Leary's ship is sent to a backwater world called Sunbright to find out if a popular revolutionary leader is a citizen of Cinnabar and either way, to stop him before his revolt brings a resumption of the galactic war that backdropped the first books of the series. The plan has Leary sneak into Sunbright as a crewman on a smuggler while Mundy masquerades as a noblewoman who's willing to hire her ship out to the forces trying to put down the revolt. Bravery, derring-do and cunning will have to be deployed if Leary and Mundy are to win the day.
Drake has said he's writing a space-opera knockoff of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin books, and he's done well with most of them. Road relies a little too much on some already-established knowledge that seems to pad the story -- by the fourth or fifth time we read Mundy talk about her discomfort with people or the fact that her servant/bodyguard is a paranoid sociopath we may be saying, "I heard you the first time, Dave." That drops Road's rank into the bottom half of the series, but it's still serviceable space opera that'll get you into orbit in one piece.
Original available here.
In The Road of Danger, Leary's ship is sent to a backwater world called Sunbright to find out if a popular revolutionary leader is a citizen of Cinnabar and either way, to stop him before his revolt brings a resumption of the galactic war that backdropped the first books of the series. The plan has Leary sneak into Sunbright as a crewman on a smuggler while Mundy masquerades as a noblewoman who's willing to hire her ship out to the forces trying to put down the revolt. Bravery, derring-do and cunning will have to be deployed if Leary and Mundy are to win the day.
Drake has said he's writing a space-opera knockoff of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin books, and he's done well with most of them. Road relies a little too much on some already-established knowledge that seems to pad the story -- by the fourth or fifth time we read Mundy talk about her discomfort with people or the fact that her servant/bodyguard is a paranoid sociopath we may be saying, "I heard you the first time, Dave." That drops Road's rank into the bottom half of the series, but it's still serviceable space opera that'll get you into orbit in one piece.
Original available here.
leons1701's review against another edition
3.0
Perhaps the Leary series is getting a bit long in the tooth. The formula still works, but it's getting a bit old and stale. Also, Drake falls a bit into Turtledove mode in this one, just how may times in one book do we need to hear that Tovera is a paranoid psychopath, or that Mundy considers herself not part of the human race? Those are significant character bits, but repeating them each 10 or more times in a single book, especially one this late in a series where most readers will know all that already?
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