The David Weber

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

He is almost as prodigious as Nora Roberts writing at least five books a year by himself or with cowriters.

His Honor Harrington series rocked in the beginning, but his last few efforts in this serial have been a bit wordy and short on action. He's made Honor a god and it's hard to build drama around someone who can't fail.

His latest effort brings him back to form. Armageddon Reef depicts the last remnants of humanity. A vastly superior interstellar race has pushed them to the brink of extinction. In order to survive they escape with a colony to a planet far from home. The figure the aliens have tracked them because of their technology so the develop a world without a medieval level of technology and they breed and indoctrinate the colony to forswear technology. Their is dissension among the builders of the society over the level of technology. One side doesn't want even a hint of technology. The other side wants to start building a way to eventually go back and defeat the aliens. The Luddites win by destroying the group that wants to battle. The Technologist leave behind a robot that will eventually awaken with the complete knowledge of their society. The robot's name is Merlin.

It looks to be the beginning of a long series. It basically starts with Merlin waking up and coming to the aid of the one kingdom that has a hope of embracing technology.

It's a pretty good yarn. Lot's of battles and intrigue. The church that is in place to make sure technology doesn't make a comeback has become corrupt. Merlin's kingdom is the one threat to the church. The church rallies the kingdom's neighbors to go to war.

Ah, warmongering and church hating. What could be wrong with that.

It's not as good as the early Harringtons but it's light years better than his Hell's Gate series which came out last.

[The Queen]

The first book, "Hell's Gate" took forever but it's Weber so I assumed that eventually it would be worth the effort of skimming through the battle descriptions and getting to the personal stories, interactions that make it interesting space opera.

Not so much.

Lots of detail about the world and learning names of characters and histories of races, culturesl and religions and why things are the way they are, but very little actual story, just snippets of promises of story yet to come.

The second book, "Hell Hath No Fury" is exactly the same - more snippets. There are SO many characters to keep track of and so little happens to each one and they are all so far apart and unable to communicate events to each other fast enough that it pretty much makes it impossible for any of the major characters to interact.

After two books, the snippets have added up to the beginning of an actual story and after two books, I'm starting to get a glipmse of where they're going with this. But if it continues in the current style and pace, it'll be at least three more books before anything I've started to care about actually happens.

And of course, the second book ends on a cliffhanger. "Eureka! I've figured out a solution to this terrible problem. It's...." and they end the effing book.

So when they come out with the third one, I'll give it a few chapters. If they don't invent an instant communication method or narrow down the storytelling voices to fewer locations and characters, I'm giving up.

Sigh.