![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.coverbrowser.com\/image\/bestselling-sci-fi-fantasy-2006\/3889-1.jpg\")
Daniel Leary, Lieutenant in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, dreams of commanding a military starship one day. \u00a0Unfortunately, as the estranged son of a corrupt senator, and with almost no money to his name, he has virtually no chance of ever seeing it happen.<\/p>\n
While serving in an assignment on Kostrama, a neutral trade world between Cinnabar and her mortal enemies, the Alliance, he meets Adele Mundy, chief librarian of the Kostraman capitol. \u00a0The title is virtual meaningless, however, as the uncultured Kostramans would give the position to anyone–even a political exile from Cinnibar such as Adele. \u00a0Her whole family was assassinated by Leary’s father, and she has sworn to take revenge.<\/p>\n
Little do they both know, the Alliance has other plans.<\/p>\n
Ever since I met David Drake<\/a> at World Fantasy 2009 in San Jose, I’ve been meaning to read one of his books. \u00a0I must say, I picked a good one. \u00a0With the Lightnings<\/em> is the first book in his RCN Series, which is basically David Drake’s take on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels. \u00a0Think Napoleon-era naval battles and political intrigue…in space.<\/p>\n Does it sound good already? \u00a0Yeah, I thought so.<\/p>\n I was a little surprised at first, because the first chapter started with a bunch of info dumps. \u00a0It took until about the halfway mark for the action to really start, but when it did, it was awesome.<\/em> A bunch of navy guys marooned on a hostile planet behind enemy lines, trying to survive a planetwide coup and blowing all kinds of stuff up along the way–yeah, it was cool.<\/p>\n The thing I enjoyed most about this book, however, was the insight into the minds of the officers and the way the officers and soldiers interacted. \u00a0You can tell that David Drake has experience in the military–lots of experience.<\/p>\n It was evident in the little things the main character noticed–the colors and patterns of soldiers’ uniforms, competency among his own men and incompetency in men not under his command, leadership style and how he dealt with crises–stuff like that. \u00a0The language was colorful, but when the soldiers swore, their language had a bite to it that went beyond the actual words. \u00a0The people felt gritty, but very real.<\/p>\n At World Fantasy, I mentioned to David Drake that I’d read some of Joe Haldeman’s works, and knew they were both Vietnam vets. \u00a0He remarked that Haldeman’s works are very much different than his own: Haldeman’s characters are constantly stabbing each other in the back, whereas in Drake’s works, there is always a sense of teamwork and unity, even when the going gets messy.<\/p>\n I could definitely see that in With the Lightnings–<\/em>it’s one of the things that made the book so fun to read. \u00a0Yes, things get pretty tough and a lot of people die, but there’s always a sense of loyalty within the platoon (or whatever the unit is called).<\/p>\n With the Lightnings<\/em> is a great space opera action\/adventure story. \u00a0After reading it, I really want to read more books in the RCN series. \u00a0If you want a good, fun military sf adventure story, this is a great one to pick up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Daniel Leary, Lieutenant in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, dreams of commanding a military starship one day. \u00a0Unfortunately, as the estranged son of a corrupt senator, and with almost no money to his name, he has virtually no chance of ever seeing it happen. While serving in an assignment on Kostrama, a neutral trade world… Continue reading With the Lightnings by David Drake<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[335,112,377,132,202,378,184,117],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-adventure","tag-character","tag-david-drake","tag-info-dumps","tag-military-science-fiction","tag-patrick-obrian","tag-space-opera","tag-violence","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-sz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1771"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1789,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1771\/revisions\/1789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}