Book Note: David Weber, Crusade

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Actually by David Weber and Steve White. Finally, the missing second book in the series! Uncle Hugo's comes through again.

This one is kinda cool. Bug-eyed monster bad guys take the history of Terra as brought by some refugees (who soon die in a plague) to construct a false religion that they use to rule their world. Then they come out to free us. And almost precipitate a new war with the Orions at the same time.

A nasty war ensues, but we manage to avoid genocide this time, and they're allies in the future books.

I should probably get this into the reread queue in a year or so and finally read them in the right order; I'm sure I'm not properly appreciating the development of the Terran Federation political culture.

This features David Weber's trademark anti-war anti-millitary stupid blind weird politicians. Luckily his have a lot more power than the real world ones like that ever seem to (and are a lot more common, too). I like hating them, but at the same time it bugs me because I suspect I'm supposed to associate anybody who, say, opposes the current war on Iraq with that kind of politician. Instead of associating the people currently making war on Iraq; who are, after all, the ones making war for personal profit, and heading into a war based on personal beliefs not supported by real-world evidence.