Book Note: David Weber, Path of the Fury

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Since Honor Harrington is appearing so slowly, I need to get my Weber fixes where I can. And I hope perhaps he can take the taste of Tom Clancy out of my mouth.

Well. That was fun. I mean, how can you not have fun when a bio-enhanced super-soldier (Imperial Cadre) who has had her whole family slaughtered by sadistic pirates while she was out hunting is possessed by the last surviving one of the Greek furies (Tisiphone)? They steal a brand-new "alpha synth" AI starship, Alicia bonds with the nascent AI and they create the first computer personality with a low sense of humor. Name the AI (and the starship) Megaera, too.

David Weber seems to spend considerable time coming up with schemes for FTL travel and then working out what sort of space combat you could have within those constraints. I've looked at three different systems of his so far, and they're all quite different. Nice to see at least some attention to credibility.

He also seems spends spear-carriers by the millions. I believe four planets are pretty much devestated by the pirates, and even the smaller ships have hundreds of crewmen. Unlike in, say, Patrick O'Brian, a first-rate will wipe out a minor vestle in mere seconds, once they're in range. Space combat tends to be all-or-nothing.

And at the end they all survive, and are even saner than at the start. Quite a lot saner. And rich. And they find a valuable line of work -- they're recruited to be Imperial Auditors, oops, I mean Ministry of Justice Operations Branch Inspectors. Seems like there could be sequels, but there hasn't been on in nine years; I guess Honor Harrington got too popular. Well, she'll have to wind down fairly soon, maybe Weber will get back to this universe. I hope so, it's fun.

I find what makes Weber's books work for me is that I like his characters. I like the way they think, many aspects of their values, and I like their friends. It makes the books a lot of fun to read. Even if the tension does get a bit high sometimes.