A Call to Duty by David Weber & Timothy Zahn

Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order and discipline in his life . . . the two things his neglectful mother couldn't or wouldn't provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he'd finally found the structure he'd always wanted so desperately.

But life in the RMN isn't exactly what he expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating; his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of extinction.

The Star Kingdom is a minor nation among the worlds of the Diaspora, its closest neighbors weeks or months away, with little in the way of resources. With only modest interstellar trade, no foreign contacts to speak of, a plague-ravaged economy to rebuild, and no enemies looming at the hyper limit, there are factions in Parliament who want nothing more than to scrap the Navy and shift its resources and manpower elsewhere.

But those factions are mistaken. The universe is not a safe place.

Travis Long is about to find that out.

There are a few writers who I will read without fail when they release a new book and David Weber is one of them. A Call to Duty, co-written with the legendary Timothy Zahn, was a nice departure, taking his Honorverse universe back in time slightly to the early years of Manticore and showing a Royal Navy dealing with very different problems – a lack of enemies means that internal pressures are about to see the RMN fold completely, left with only a small number of ships to protect its borders. 

As usual, A Call to Duty has a large cast of characters, but the main storyline centers around Travis Long, a young enlisted whose out of the box thinking brings him both opportunities and major problems. Your reaction to A Call to Duty is likely to depend entirely on how you feel about the rest of Weber’s work – the book has the same long descriptions of hardware, political intrigue, space battles and lack of aliens. I for one love the universe Weber has created and Long is a worthy successor (predecessor ?) of Honor Harrington. The ending has all of the trademark action and tension as one expects from David Weber and sets things up nicely for the sequel whenever that may be.

I gave A Call to Duty 4 stars. 

Star Wars A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller

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Disclaimer: This electronic copy was provided by the publisher in return for an honest review.

In the aftermath of the Clone Wars, the Republic has fallen, replaced by the Empire. The Jedi were betrayed and slaughtered, leaving only a handful of survivors to eke out a quiet existence on the fringes of galactic power. But as the Emperor tightens his grip, even those fringes have begun to fall under the iron rule of the Empire. Hidden amongst those who live in the outskirts are those whose lives were destroyed by Palpatine's plans, those who have begun to question his means and motives. On the far off world of Gorse, a handful of such people, including Kanan Jarrus, a former Jedi padawan and Hera Syndulla, an agent provocateur with plans of her own, will stand together against one of the Empire's most fearsome enforcers... with the fate of an entire world in the palm of their hands. 

Few people interested in pop culture will have failed to notice the intense discussion that broke out a few months ago when Disney announced that the Star Wars Expanded Universe - the vast collection of novels, short stories, comics and games that had so far formed the unofficial canon of the galaxy far far away - was being wiped clean, replaced by a brand new canon that would be just as official as the movies. Starting with the Clone Wars cartoon, this new canon would also include new novels, the first of which - A New Dawn - sets up the cartoon series Rebels. 

A New Dawn does a nice job of setting up the main characters of the series, while also telling an interesting, exciting, but slightly disappointing story involving mining, terrorism and the fight for freedom. Centered around two main characters - both of whom are featured on the cover - A New Dawn is no revolutionary new beginning for the Star Wars galaxy. While it does manage to keep your attention thanks to a race against time plot and a reluctant Jedi forced to embrace his powers once again, it is hard to hide the fact that this is designed to get the characters into their positions ready for Rebels to begin in October. The addition of a handful of secondary characters, including a very well realised villain, does add some spice to the story, but it is difficult to develop any real interest in Kanan and Hera. Hopefully the upcoming novels, one of which will centre on Grand Moff Tarkin, will do more to ignite this new expanded universe. 

I gave Star Wars: A New Dawn 3 stars

Honour's Knight by Rachel Bach

"You said no?" the girl shrieked, crushing the letter in her fist. "You didn't even think you should ask me first?"

 

Following the events of Fortune’s Pawn, we find Devi Morris, the kick-ass mercenary who is the hero of the Paradox trilogy, recovering from a mysterious attack that has left her a fellow merc dead and some major holes in her own memory. As she struggles with her own issues (which include seeing things no one else can such as a black stain spreading across her hands whenever she gets angry), Devi tries to make sense of the people she is serving with and to close the gap in her memories.

Rachel Bach had been on my radar for a while through her alter-ego, Rachel Aaron and The Spirit Thief series. Although I have yet to actually read that fantasy series, I did read Ms. Aaron’s book on her writing process 2,000 to 10,000 and loved her voice as well as her great advice. So when I read on her blog that she had a new series coming out, that it was a self-contained trilogy to be released over a six-month period and that it was a space opera starring a mercenary... I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it!

I thoroughly enjoyed Fortune’s Pawn, which reads like a space opera revisited by an urban fantasy author. The collision of tropes worked a treat and when the story broke off on a HUGE cliffhanger, I couldn’t wait to get back to Devi’s weird, wonderful, complicated universe.

Honour’s Knight does not lose any of the momentum that Ms. Bach ended Fortune’s Pawn with. Instead, she picks up all of the story threads and launches them into orbit. I was a little worried that the entire book was going to be Devi trying to get her memories back, but thankfully that specific storythread was nicely wrapped up relatively quickly, allowing the book to explore a lot of interesting territory. We learn a lot about what is actually going on with Devi’s mysterious employer, the huge galaxy-wide threat he is facing and the lengths he is willing to go to fight off that threat, while putting Devi into a complicated moral conundrum – just how far is too far when it comes to sacrifying the few for the many?

Devi herself is put through the wringer in this one, from her complicated relationship with cook Rupert (a romance that is handled extremely well and very believably considering what each of them are willing and able to do the other as the story progresses without a pat solution at the end), to the shattering of her belief system as we get a glimpse at the deified royalty of Paradox mentioned in the last books. As all of this is going on, though, Devi continues to kick some serious ass, which is one of the great successes of this trilogy and a wonderful ‘steal’ from the urban fantasy genre: the depiction of a strong, powerful female character. Devi is not someone anyone should ever piss-off.

Alliances shift, surprises are sprung and things end with Devi and Rupert alone in the unknown, the book ending on another cliffhanger nicely setting up the third book, Heaven’s Queen, which is due in April. Honour’s Knight took everything that worked in the first book and shifted it into warp speed, continuing a fantastic space opera trilogy. I gave this 4 strange blue invisible bugs out of 5.

 

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From the Blogosphere:

The Book Smugglers

52 Book Reviews

Fantasy Book Critic

 

From the Author's Mouth:

Interview at Orbit Books