{"id":8567,"date":"2013-05-19T14:38:57","date_gmt":"2013-05-19T20:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=8567"},"modified":"2013-05-19T14:38:57","modified_gmt":"2013-05-19T20:38:57","slug":"starliner-by-david-drake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/starliner-by-david-drake\/","title":{"rendered":"Starliner by David Drake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"starliner\"Welcome to the Empress of Earth,<\/em> the finest luxury liner in all of settled space.\u00a0 Whether you’re alien or human, first class or economy, there is a place on the ship for you.\u00a0 Just watch out for those Grantholmers and Nevassans–those planets are about to go to war, but don’t worry, the Empress<\/em> is strictly neutral territory.\u00a0 The envoys from Earth will see to that.\u00a0 And as for the rumors that one of those sides might try to hijack the ship, I’m sure the crew is capable enough to deal with such threats.\u00a0 Even if they are unarmed…<\/p>\n

I saw this book on my also-boughts on Amazon, so I decided to pick it up.\u00a0 It was an enjoyable read.\u00a0 David Drake is very good at showing competent characters dealing with all sorts of complicated problems, operating within a strict chain of command while sometimes bending the rules a bit to get the job done.<\/p>\n

The book is really a series of small vignettes, all tied together through the main viewpoint character, Ran Colville.\u00a0 There is an overarching storyline about the Empress’s<\/em> role as a coveted pawn in a larger interstellar war, but that only really drives the story at the very end.\u00a0 Really, it’s more of a slice-of-life story about the crew of the ship, punctuated by all of the strange and exotic stops along the way–and boy, are there plenty of those!<\/p>\n

Even though the Empress<\/em> is neutral, she’s a potentially valuable military asset that both sides in the Grantholm-Nevassan war want to capture.\u00a0 To complicate matters further, some of the passengers are dignitaries from either side.\u00a0 At one point, there’s a romance between the peacenik daughter of a Nevassan diplomat and the son of a Grantholmer nobleman who is honor-bound to fight in the war.\u00a0 That subplot was a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

As you can imagine, there’s plenty of violence.\u00a0 And really, what would you expect from one of the world’s best military science fiction writers?\u00a0 Drake does a really good job showing the adrenaline-soaked excitement of combat, as well as all the ugliness.\u00a0 Even the mooks get a viewpoint from time to time, and when they die, it’s messy and traumatic.\u00a0 For that reason, the violence feels very realistic, especially in how it affects the main characters.<\/p>\n

Ran is something of a player, so there is a fair amount of explicit sex (including a bit of inter-species action).\u00a0 Drake doesn’t mince words or shy away from the gritty details–he puts it all on the page as matter-of-factly as any other aspect of life.\u00a0 The sex was brief enough that it didn’t really bother me that much, but Ran’s relationship toward one of his coworkers takes a turn at the end that seemed to come completely out of left-field.\u00a0 I could understand why, for the purposes of the story, it had to happen, but the way it was handled I just didn’t buy it.<\/p>\n

That was probably my biggest gripe.\u00a0 If I had another, it would be that the story seems to meander a bit in the first two-thirds, but the world-building was interesting enough that it didn’t really bother me.\u00a0 Overall, it was a fun, light read (well, light for military sf).\u00a0 The ebook version is free on Amazon<\/a>, so it’s definitely worth picking up.\u00a0 If you haven’t read any David Drake yet, this isn’t a bad place to start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Empress of Earth, the finest luxury liner in all of settled space.\u00a0 Whether you’re alien or human, first class or economy, there is a place on the ship for you.\u00a0 Just watch out for those Grantholmers and Nevassans–those planets are about to go to war, but don’t worry, the Empress is strictly… Continue reading Starliner 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":"My review of Starliner by David Drake.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[377,202,257,184,117,86],"class_list":["post-8567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-david-drake","tag-military-science-fiction","tag-sex","tag-space-opera","tag-violence","tag-war","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2eb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8567","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=8567"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8571,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8567\/revisions\/8571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}