David Weber /John Ringo - March to the Sea - 9/10

Post by **KiltanneN** » Mon Oct 18, 2004 9:56 pm

March to the Sea /Empire of Man

I give this book an unashamed 10 out of 10. I picked it up thinking it was the first in a series - but it seems to be the second. Even so - it gave enough information about the action in the first book that I was not completely lost - but it was sufficiently filtered that I don't think it would get annoying.

It is a military book, and has a LOT of gore. This is not done in a gratuitis fashion - it simply exists in a realistic sense. The tactics to my untrained eye seem robust - and the fight scenes also seem to flow smoothly. No clangors that I picked up at least...

The characters in the book are painted with subtle shades & the authors give us a wonderfull oppurtunity to get to know them. The contrast in the fundamental philosophy of the advanced civilisation couldn't be more at contrast with the Star Trek federation concept of low impact contact. Technology is shared, in a military sense, with devastating results.

The values of society as a whole are brought to play as very lightly addressed questions.

I had one minor nit - and that was the all-too human attitudes of the alien society. It just seemed a little bit too similar to Earthly thought patterns. Aside from this one minor flaw, the writing was superb, my "suspension of belief" was complete. I also did not want to put the book down. Just a thoroughly enjoyable yarn.

kilt

Vomaxx · Post by **Vomaxx** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 5:49 pm

Have you read the original "march to the sea"--Xenophon's Anabasis? Now there's a real adventure story, and all true, too.

Post by **clong** » Sat Dec 04, 2004 7:04 am

If you are interested, kilt, the first book "the March Upcountry" is available as a free ebook from http://www.baen.com/library .