Off Armageddon Reef by David Weber

[snugglekitty]

7j recommended this to me. She said it was not just the same as the March to the Sea series, which was my big fear - I don't think the series is actually that good. Happily, a lot of the bugs in THAT series (lack of believability, lack of good secondary characters) have been worked out for this one. Very cool.

I liked the gender stuff in this book. (Yes, Weber wrote a book with unconventional gender stuff in it. I'm as surprised as you are, believe me.) I really liked the main characters. As usual, the battle scenes were quite good. In this book, also, Weber does some really believable world-building. He still writes the kind of society he seems most comfortable with (monarchy, religious, patriarchal) but he does set up fairly believable reasons for it to be the way it is. Probably my least favorite thing is the way that the "bad guys" set themselves up as gods in the dominant religion - methinks someone was watching a bit too much Stargate. I really hope the whole Inquisition thing doesn't turn into characters getting tortured a lot, but Weber doesn't usually write that sort of thing, so it should work out.

Weber seems to be interested in the idea of societies progressing through technology these days. I like it, but I'd like it more if it wasn't so... historical. He seems to think that the way humans developed (first pikes, then swords, then cannons, then smaller guns, etc) is the only way that things could work out, or the BEST way that things could work out, even if the planetary conditions are very different from Earth's. That's not my favorite thing about it. I'd love to see him set up the same situation in a world that, say, doesn't have any iron. What will you do THEN, big guy? Huh? Might you have to IMPROVISE? Or possibly even INNOVATE?? But he made it work better in this book than in the Prince Roger series, so I'm inclined to be forgiving.

I thought this book was lovely. Three stars, mainly because I'm unlikely to read it over and over, but I will definitely read and expect to enjoy the rest of the series.