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wyntrchylde's review
2.0
Exodus
Author: Steve White & Shirley Meier
Publisher: Baen
Date: 2006
Pgs: 270
Dewey: WHI
Disposition: Inter Library Loan via Missouri River Regional Library, Jefferson City, Missouri to Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
_________________________________________________
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
The Arduans companion star is going to go nova. They know it is coming. The answer is to leap toward the stars with everything that they can carry. Refugees in ships many miles across...at lower than light speed. Generation ships. A telepathic species who have psychic immortality. But the new homes that their diaspora has carried them to have creatures on them. They don’t believe that the humans they encounter are intelligent. Vermin. The planets are covered in vermin. And vermin don’t deserve to have planets to themselves. Then, the animals fight back.
_________________________________________________
Genre:
Science Fiction
Military
Space Opera
Action
Adventure
Why this book:
I’ve loved the Starfire series.
_________________________________________________
Favorite Character:
First Space Lord Li Han. She is a force of nature here analogus to Howard Anderson and Ivan Antonov in the previous books.
It was a good character beat when Cyrus had to be strong in the face of the enemy as he managed the retreat of his fleet and mourned the loss of his friend.
Least Favorite Character:
All of the Arduans. They are a bit of cardboard.
Favorite Scene / Quote:
Li Hans surprise about the Devastator class at the allied conference on Zephraim was cool.
The arrival and battle of the 2nd set of Arudan invader refugees is better than the 1st. Maybe because there is more grounding in the tech and the ideas than the same around the 1st groups arrival and conquest.
The spider web ambush was awesome ship to ship militaria in space.
Third Bellerophon is well done. This is everything I love abotu the Starfire series. Heroics, drama, things going boom, life and death.
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
The behind enemy lines guerilla aspect would have had to be gigantic and superiorly dramatic to stand up to previous instances of that aspect in the other books. And it doesn’t.
Hmm Moments:
The starship battles aspect of science fiction has always been a favorite of mine. This info dumps on tactical ship criteria are mostly well placed and pertinent.
Meh / PFFT Moments:
There’s a hole in Vice Admiral Krishmahnta and her staff’s strategy. They talk of being outflanked thru the Magnus-Zhi warp point chain. The problem is that the warp point between Magnus and Zhi is a closed warp point and therefore invisible to sensors. The Arduans are neophytes at the warp point game and all the ones that they’ve found and used so far they’ve been lead to by the Alliance. So, the idea that if the Alliance made the effort to hide the closed warp point, moved or destroyed the stuff around it, then the only way the Arduans would find it would be if they stumbled through it. This would have effectively lead the Arduans into a cul-de-sac that they couldn’t escape from without accidentally falling through the closed warp point. And space is big.
Sigh. Art...really? That’s feels cliched.
Missed Opportunity:
Where are the Crucians?
_________________________________________________
Last Page Sound:
To be continued.
Author Assessment:
I’ll be there for the next book, because I know the potential. When done right, Starfire is an awesome sci fi militaria platform.
Editorial Assessment:
At book’s end, I feel that a quarter of this could have been left on the editor’s floor. I enjoyed it, but I am steeped in the series. If this was someone’s intro to the series, I have misgivings about whether they would return for another bite.
Knee Jerk Reaction:
it’s alright
_________________________________________________
Author: Steve White & Shirley Meier
Publisher: Baen
Date: 2006
Pgs: 270
Dewey: WHI
Disposition: Inter Library Loan via Missouri River Regional Library, Jefferson City, Missouri to Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
_________________________________________________
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
The Arduans companion star is going to go nova. They know it is coming. The answer is to leap toward the stars with everything that they can carry. Refugees in ships many miles across...at lower than light speed. Generation ships. A telepathic species who have psychic immortality. But the new homes that their diaspora has carried them to have creatures on them. They don’t believe that the humans they encounter are intelligent. Vermin. The planets are covered in vermin. And vermin don’t deserve to have planets to themselves. Then, the animals fight back.
_________________________________________________
Genre:
Science Fiction
Military
Space Opera
Action
Adventure
Why this book:
I’ve loved the Starfire series.
_________________________________________________
Favorite Character:
First Space Lord Li Han. She is a force of nature here analogus to Howard Anderson and Ivan Antonov in the previous books.
It was a good character beat when Cyrus had to be strong in the face of the enemy as he managed the retreat of his fleet and mourned the loss of his friend.
Least Favorite Character:
All of the Arduans. They are a bit of cardboard.
Favorite Scene / Quote:
Li Hans surprise about the Devastator class at the allied conference on Zephraim was cool.
The arrival and battle of the 2nd set of Arudan invader refugees is better than the 1st. Maybe because there is more grounding in the tech and the ideas than the same around the 1st groups arrival and conquest.
The spider web ambush was awesome ship to ship militaria in space.
Third Bellerophon is well done. This is everything I love abotu the Starfire series. Heroics, drama, things going boom, life and death.
Plot Holes/Out of Character:
The behind enemy lines guerilla aspect would have had to be gigantic and superiorly dramatic to stand up to previous instances of that aspect in the other books. And it doesn’t.
Hmm Moments:
The starship battles aspect of science fiction has always been a favorite of mine. This info dumps on tactical ship criteria are mostly well placed and pertinent.
Meh / PFFT Moments:
There’s a hole in Vice Admiral Krishmahnta and her staff’s strategy. They talk of being outflanked thru the Magnus-Zhi warp point chain. The problem is that the warp point between Magnus and Zhi is a closed warp point and therefore invisible to sensors. The Arduans are neophytes at the warp point game and all the ones that they’ve found and used so far they’ve been lead to by the Alliance. So, the idea that if the Alliance made the effort to hide the closed warp point, moved or destroyed the stuff around it, then the only way the Arduans would find it would be if they stumbled through it. This would have effectively lead the Arduans into a cul-de-sac that they couldn’t escape from without accidentally falling through the closed warp point. And space is big.
Sigh. Art...really? That’s feels cliched.
Missed Opportunity:
Where are the Crucians?
_________________________________________________
Last Page Sound:
To be continued.
Author Assessment:
I’ll be there for the next book, because I know the potential. When done right, Starfire is an awesome sci fi militaria platform.
Editorial Assessment:
At book’s end, I feel that a quarter of this could have been left on the editor’s floor. I enjoyed it, but I am steeped in the series. If this was someone’s intro to the series, I have misgivings about whether they would return for another bite.
Knee Jerk Reaction:
it’s alright
_________________________________________________
jmoses's review
2.0
Man, this was disappointing. I'm a huge fan of this series, and was hoping for more excellence. Unfortunately, there isn't any. Compared to the previous entries, this one is shallow and small. There's minimal character development, and there's a real lack of connection between the chapters. It feels like a semi-related collection of short stories, none of them very good. I read it, and I'll read the next one, but only because of the previous entries, and not because of this one.
pjonsson's review
4.0
This book is a continuation of the Starfire series and is published quite a few years after the previous book in this series. David Weber is no longer in the authors list and, even though the book was quite enjoyable, this shows. The book starts a new story arc in the Starfire universe but the basics of the story seems to be similar to previous books, that is, another day another invader. I have nothing against that. It is a type of story that I normally like.
In general I did like the book. The book is well enough written, some of the interesting characters are back and there is some nice “slugging it out” action in space. I did not like it as much as the previous two books though. Those where both 10 out of 10 stars for me. I think the absence of Weber shows. I wrote that the book was well enough written but it does kind of lacks the “touch” that he usually manages to get into his books. I especially missed him in the details of the space fights which were not bad in this book but still somewhat superficial compared to what Weber can do if he sets his mind to it.
The book references back to previous books quite a lot so, even though the book is readable without knowledge of the prior books, I would not recommend it. Unfortunately most references go all the way back to Insurrection, the first book in the series, which was the book in the series that I liked the least.
The book spends quite a bit of time on the Aliens and the story flip-flops back and forth between the alien viewpoint and the humans all the time. I cannot make up my mind if I liked this or not. The way the aliens communicated and how it was written in the book was interesting. It did however become a wee bit tedious to read through all those brackets with emotions in them after a while. On one hand it was interesting to follow the other side as well but on the other hand I usually ended up thinking, enough of this, lets get back to the good guys.
Speaking of good guys, maybe that is the wrong term to use since the entire war is pretty much the fault of the humans. Personally I thought it was rather cheap and unimaginative to use the old “dumb military office cannot keep his finger off the bloody trigger, mistakes sensors for an attack and screws up big time” plot element. I got off to a quite bad start with the book thanks to that.
There is no real conclusion in this book. As a matter of fact, pretty much all of the book is more or less setting the stage for this new story arc and it is not until the end of the book that the humans finally starts to get organized and put together some coherent, longer term plans for kicking the alien’s butts out human space. Now that will of course pose an interesting moral dilemma since the aliens are in reality homeless and, as I noted previously, the blame of the hostilities really falls on the humans.
Although the book was not as good as the previous two books I did enjoy the book for sure and I will definitely read the next one.
In general I did like the book. The book is well enough written, some of the interesting characters are back and there is some nice “slugging it out” action in space. I did not like it as much as the previous two books though. Those where both 10 out of 10 stars for me. I think the absence of Weber shows. I wrote that the book was well enough written but it does kind of lacks the “touch” that he usually manages to get into his books. I especially missed him in the details of the space fights which were not bad in this book but still somewhat superficial compared to what Weber can do if he sets his mind to it.
The book references back to previous books quite a lot so, even though the book is readable without knowledge of the prior books, I would not recommend it. Unfortunately most references go all the way back to Insurrection, the first book in the series, which was the book in the series that I liked the least.
The book spends quite a bit of time on the Aliens and the story flip-flops back and forth between the alien viewpoint and the humans all the time. I cannot make up my mind if I liked this or not. The way the aliens communicated and how it was written in the book was interesting. It did however become a wee bit tedious to read through all those brackets with emotions in them after a while. On one hand it was interesting to follow the other side as well but on the other hand I usually ended up thinking, enough of this, lets get back to the good guys.
Speaking of good guys, maybe that is the wrong term to use since the entire war is pretty much the fault of the humans. Personally I thought it was rather cheap and unimaginative to use the old “dumb military office cannot keep his finger off the bloody trigger, mistakes sensors for an attack and screws up big time” plot element. I got off to a quite bad start with the book thanks to that.
There is no real conclusion in this book. As a matter of fact, pretty much all of the book is more or less setting the stage for this new story arc and it is not until the end of the book that the humans finally starts to get organized and put together some coherent, longer term plans for kicking the alien’s butts out human space. Now that will of course pose an interesting moral dilemma since the aliens are in reality homeless and, as I noted previously, the blame of the hostilities really falls on the humans.
Although the book was not as good as the previous two books I did enjoy the book for sure and I will definitely read the next one.
tagryn101's review
2.0
It was fun to revisit some old favorite characters, and the new aliens were somewhat interesting. However, I think this will probably appeal mainly to those who are already familiar with the milieu and how the universe works, I wouldn't want this to be a person's introduction to the Starfire universe. At the least, "Insurrection" should be required reading before starting this set, since it relies so much on the characters who were introduced in that book.