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A review by brettt
Cauldron of Ghosts by Eric Flint, David Weber
2.0
David Weber began his Honor Harrington series in 1992 with On Basilisk Station, and in it our intrepid heroine commanded a ship of the Star Kingdom of Manticore against the far larger People's Republic of Haven. Manticore remained Haven's superior on the fields of battle because of its robust interstellar trade and Haven's corruption. And in case Weber hadn't made it clear he was writing a Horatio Hornblower England v. Revolutionary France-in-space novel, the leader of Haven was Rob S. Pierre.
But the two nations have found a common enemy after many years of fighting, and are now allied against the Mesan Alignment. This cloak-and-dagger corporation has as its goal the establishment of a genetic caste system throughout as much of the galaxy as possible -- with its own directors as tyrant oligarchs. Master spies Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki, of Haven and Manticore respectively, have been moving against Mesa's backstage shenanigans for some time and have helped uncover enough of the conspiracy to unite their formerly antagonistic governments. Now in Cauldron of Ghosts Cachat, Zilwicki and their team infiltrate the Mesa homeworld to try to gain proof of the conspiracy and perhaps even bring Mesa a freedom its people have never known.
For this series, Weber teams with sci-fi author Eric Flint, who is a well-known name in military-based science fiction in his own right. It's hard for anyone other than the authors to say how much each one contributed, Flint has less success than other collaborators in reducing the amount of "meeting minutes" scenes to which his colleague is prone. The espionage plotline is handled deftly, but the pair telegraph the villains' atrocities with almost anesthetized clumsiness. The Mesans are exploding bombs in their own cities to create a "terrorist threat" they can use to justify harsh measures, and as soon as we meet some ordinary person going about their business in the middle of a chapter, we know what's coming. The replication of these scenes lengthens and deadens the story, and helps make Cauldron one of the weaker entries in its particular Honorverse series.
See original here.
But the two nations have found a common enemy after many years of fighting, and are now allied against the Mesan Alignment. This cloak-and-dagger corporation has as its goal the establishment of a genetic caste system throughout as much of the galaxy as possible -- with its own directors as tyrant oligarchs. Master spies Victor Cachat and Anton Zilwicki, of Haven and Manticore respectively, have been moving against Mesa's backstage shenanigans for some time and have helped uncover enough of the conspiracy to unite their formerly antagonistic governments. Now in Cauldron of Ghosts Cachat, Zilwicki and their team infiltrate the Mesa homeworld to try to gain proof of the conspiracy and perhaps even bring Mesa a freedom its people have never known.
For this series, Weber teams with sci-fi author Eric Flint, who is a well-known name in military-based science fiction in his own right. It's hard for anyone other than the authors to say how much each one contributed, Flint has less success than other collaborators in reducing the amount of "meeting minutes" scenes to which his colleague is prone. The espionage plotline is handled deftly, but the pair telegraph the villains' atrocities with almost anesthetized clumsiness. The Mesans are exploding bombs in their own cities to create a "terrorist threat" they can use to justify harsh measures, and as soon as we meet some ordinary person going about their business in the middle of a chapter, we know what's coming. The replication of these scenes lengthens and deadens the story, and helps make Cauldron one of the weaker entries in its particular Honorverse series.
See original here.