Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Read Lately: With The Lightnings by David Drake

  • While still on my science fiction high, I decided to plow ahead and try something else from the Baen Free Library. It did not take long to settle on David Drake's With The Lightnings.

  • While On Basilisk Station is compared to Horatio Hornblower, With The Lightnings draws its inspiration from Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series. The main characters, Lt. Daniel Leary and Adele Mundy, develop mutual respect for one another and discover how well they compliment each other.

  • The novel descibes the battle between the Republic of Cinnabar (the space British) and the Alliance of Free Stars (the space French) over the neutral planet Kostroma. Lt. Leary, a member of the Cinnabar delegation, and Adele Mundy, a refugee librarian, end up working together to escape an Alliance invasion and begin to fight back.

  • With The Lightnings was slower to get into. But I think the payoff was a deeper understanding of the main characters and why they would be drawn to one another. By the time I reached the end, there was nothing slow about it. I could turn pages fast enough to see the resolution.

  • Though there are superficial similarities between the Honor Harrington and the Leary/Mundy books, I don't seen any problems reading the two series side-by-side. And I fully intend to read David Drake's next as soon as I have the opportunity.


© 2012 Marty Runyon. All rights reserved.

3 comments:

  1. I read the whole Leary/Mundy series save for the latest book (and all of the Aubrey/Maturin series for that matter), and it gets better as it goes along. If nothing, the spacefaring terminology settles down a bit. I think he was trying out new terms in the first book that did not quite work. And the series doesn't get as... bogged down maybe... as I felt that the Honor Harrington did after a few books.

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    1. That's good to know. Luckily I'm only one book into each series, so neither has dropped off a cliff yet.

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  2. I am looking for some good Sci-Fi to get into. I am assuming you will recommend this, anything else you will recommend?

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