Richard Baker (1)Besprekingen
Auteur van Condemnation
Voor andere auteurs genaamd Richard Baker, zie de verduidelijkingspagina.
Richard Baker (1) via een alias veranderd in L. Richard Baker.
Besprekingen
Fyrirsjáanleg saga og nokkuð hefðbundin.
Cons: more military minutiae than I personally like though less space battle action than military SF fans may be looking for
His Highness Lieutenant Sikander Singh North, Nawabzada of Ishar, is assigned to the Aquilan Commonwealth starship Hector as its new gunnery officer. Well aware that few Kashmiris serve in the Commonwealth officer corps, he must prove himself to his new crew members who look down on the colonial system of his birth.
Amira Ranya Meriem el-Nasir, niece to Sultan Rashid and Crown Princess of Gadira is concerned by the politics of her home world. As a colony of the Republic of Montreal, Gadira has made great strides in modernizing. This has increased the power of the Beys, but many of her people have lost jobs, and religious insurgents fearing for the traditions of their people are becoming more powerful.
With tensions mounting, the Hector is sent to Gadira to protect the commonwealth’s consulate and commercial interests even as another major power works to destabilize the planet’s government.
There’s a lot going on in this book, predominantly the examination of pre-WWI style colonization. We see this from Sikander’s view, as someone whose country is modernizing but still has economic and political issues, as well as with Ranya, whose country is caught in a clash of colonial interests. Aside from insurgents, we’re not shown much of how big events impact ‘little’ people, but it’s quite interesting seeing the various power plays at higher levels. It’s easy to see who the players are with regards to their historic influences, though I’m not sure to what extent the details of the book are influenced by real history.
There’s a lot of nuance with regards to how Sikander is treated and how he reacts to those around him. He’s constantly aware of who he is and what that means in the larger picture of his service, his home world, and himself. But the book doesn’t harp on issues, it examines them and shows the reality of the different situations, then moves on as time passes and conditions change.
There are three point of view characters, and I really enjoyed seeing the two mentioned above (the third isn’t a character we’re meant to like). The characters must deal with a variety of issues, which keeps them feeling fresh and fully realized.
There’s a high attention to detail - much of it military in nature. Personally I found it a bit much though I suspect military history buffs will enjoy learning more about the ships, armaments, tanks, etc. being mentioned. Fans of military SF may find that there’s less military minutiae and action than they’d like, as the main focus of the book is on the politics and character based drama rather than military strategizing. The book uses generally realistic physics for its one space battle, which was fun to read.
While they were sometimes hard to follow I enjoyed the variety of titles used (I found it fascinating that titles often changed depending on the speaker as well as the location).
This book has a high amount of world-building and politicking and minimal military action, and I enjoyed it a lot.
The story is told through the eyes of Sikander North, royalty in his own system of Kashmiri but sent into military service in the Aquilan Commonwealth. On a new assignment as gunnery officer on the CSS Hector, Sikander faces adversity ranging from skepticism of his qualifications to outright hostility.
A sudden change in orders sends the Hector to the planet Gadira. Gadira is led by a Sultan. The Sultanate is under pressure within from rebels who desire a stricter adherence to religious dictates and from without by colonial powers looking to extend their influence in the system as well as provoke the other colonial powers. Sikander must navigate his duty to his ship with the desire to keep peace on Gadira, a culture he strongly identifies with. Tensions between the natives on the planet and between the competing interplanetary powers above it make for an exciting story.
Baker excels at creating political intrigue and simmering tensions. The action builds steadily until exploding into crisply and entertainingly drawn battles both on the planet and in orbit around it. Characterization isn’t especially deep in this first novel in the series, but the religious tensions and the uneasy alliances between and among interstellar empires are well detailed. The decision to tell the story through the eyes of a gunnery officer rather than a ship’s captain leads to an interesting perspective on the events. Particular one of Sikander North’s background. Valiant Dust is chock full of action and political intrigue. It is an exciting story and a great introduction to a new series. One in which I look forward to reading many more adventures.
I was fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book from the publisher.
An interesting reworking of space opera themes. Recontact by more developed interstellar powers with isolated frontier worlds from Terra and how that plays out. In this case the two major powers are the Aquilan Commonwealth and the Dremark Empire.
The world that is in question, Gadira II, is populated by those of Islamic leanings, adhering to moderate Quranist understandings of that faith.
It seems an agent of the Dremark Empire is setting up Gadira, for planetary unrest and thereby being able to install a puppet government aligned with Dremark's self interest. (Is it all sounding familiar?)
The main character, Lieutenant Sikander Singh North, a gunner officer, is from a similar frontier world, Kashmir. This system has been able to escalate its development under the more moderate Aquilan Commonwealth.
He's not only a member of the star fleet forces but akin to a prince in his own nation, hence his valet, Darvesh Reza who 'functions as Sikander's security detail, secretary, and general minder as well as his body servant.' I am sure Darvesh is going to join the renowned list of select sidekicks so enjoyed in other space operas.
For some reason Sikander's character is reminding me of Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock from David Weber and John Ringo's series, Empire of Man. I know completely different characters and situations, still ... I'm intuiting some similarities.
There is a slight romantic interest for Sikander's with the intelligent, astute niece of the Sultan, Amira Ranya Meriem el-Nasir, Crown Princess of Gadir. A romance destined not to be.
Captain Markham, captain of the CSS Hector reminds me of some of the stalwart and fearless female captains from the Honor Harrington series.
The battles are all well orchestrated and described by Baker. It's in these situations of course we see further development of major and secondary characters, as they react under fire.
I look forward to the next in this series.
A NetGalley ARC
No real desire to read the rest of the series. The drow are just horrible. Backstabbing, no trust, no hope. No race could have gone on like that for real. It would have imploded or torn itself apart.
Title: Avenger Series: Blades of the Moonsea, Forgotten Realms Author: Richard Baker Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SFF Pages: 369 Synopsis: The Hullmasters are under attack, even while in exile. Gerun decides that NOW is the time to take Hullburg back from the usurpers. But it isn't just a rogue Elven magician with a vendetta against Gerun that the Hulmasters must contend with, the Black Magician Knights are involved as well. My Thoughts: This was a good solid ending to this trilogy. There wasn't as much high seas adventures, but the magical golems and the fight in the shadow realm more than made up for that. The "romance" was satisfactorily wrapped up as well, but to be honest, it felt very tacked on, ever since the first book in fact. This was not a fantastic fantasy series, but it was solid and enjoyable. Baker is a good author and I wish more Forgotten Realms series/books were written as well as this one. "
Title: The City of Ravens
Series: The Cities
Author: Richard Baker
Rating: of 5 Battle Axes
Genre: SFF
Pages: 324
Format: Kindle
Synopsis:
Jack Ravenwild is a dandy, a thief, a magician and an utterly pompous kind of guy. So it isn't a surprise when he gets 3 different commissions from 3 different beautiful women. But since they all tie together in the end, it makes for a very light and fun adventure.
My Thoughts:
This was so deliberately over the top that I was rolling my eyes the entire time. Thankfully, Baker had enough skill and deftness of touch that I was also laughing while rolling my eyes.
Jack was an irrepressible character and had a flair for the fanciful. While most Forgotten Realms' books go for the faux-epic feel, or the dark and gritty, this was unabashed mockery of that. Either that or Baker is such a bad writer that he's a genius.
I wouldn't be able to take a steady diet of this, but every once in a while something silly is needed to counteract all the ridiculous authors who are miserable and take it out on us the readers.
After the bad experience I had with The Citadels series, I am encouraged that this started out so lightly. "
Title: Corsair Series: Blades of the Moonsea, Forgotten Realms Author: Richard Baker Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars Genre: SFF Pages: 384 Synopsis: Geran, now acting like a responsible adult, comes across pirates, who seem to be preying on only ships headed for his hometown. Due to politics, which hide more revenge motives than you can shake a stick at, Geran is sent off with a boat and some Shieldsworn to hunt the pirates down. On the phracking MOON! My Thoughts: This was so much more enjoyable than the previous book, Swordmage. Geran isn't acting like a spoiled brat and his enemies are acting like enemies instead of petty idiots. I thought the whole pirate/ship thing was pretty cool actually. And when they magically fly to the moon on a sailing ship, all I could think of was Captain Harlock and his Pirate Space/Sailing ship. And it was cool, in case you didn't get that. The other thing I liked was that Geran wasn't so aggressively introspective and angsty. I'm an introspective kind of guy, but even I get tired of reading about other people being like me. Overall, there was more action, less "characterization" and more "fun" factor in this book. "
Spoiler.
Don't even get me started with on the dying words of a father to his daughter telling her to follow her heart. That line alone is a star.
For quite a while I had been looking for a science-fiction roleplaying game that was more like Dungeons and Dragons than a roleplaying game that involved either this:
R2D2
or this:
USS Enterprise
and while I might think these are pretty cool:
Star Destroyer – Star Wars
as well as these:
Light Saber
this really annoys me:
C3PO
as does this:
Spock
(he's not that bad) and while talking about science-fiction characters that tend to rub me up the wrong way, I simply cannot forget him:
Jar Jar Binks
Anyway, enough of all these pictures and more on this particular book. Most of the science-fiction roleplaying games tended to all be single setting games, based around (usually) Star Wars (and while there may have been a Star Trek game around, I am not sure whether it was all that popular). What I was looking for is something more generic, much like Dungeons and Dragons. Dungeons and Dragons did have their own specific worlds, what I really liked about it was that you could, and were encouraged to, create your own. This meant that if you wanted a world without elves you could create one (and while I did create some worlds, I generally included elves, though in one of them the elves were arrogant and stuck up creatures that believed themselves to be superior to everybody else; so while players could play elves, they tended to be treated with hatred and contempt).
Science-fiction poses a different problem because the scope is much larger. You could create a space opera, much like Star Wars (or Star Trek), or you could create a near future dystopia (such a Nueromancer) or even a modern setting where you are investigating alien sightings (much like the X-files). You could even create a amalgamation of all three (though that would be quite difficult).
What I wanted was a system that was generic and I could add and remove what I wanted to create a world (or universe) that I liked. I tried it with Traveller, but the rules were so complicated that I ended up ditching it. Shadowrun was cool, but once again, it was a single system setting, and to turn it into a space opera with magic was simply too difficult to do (since you have to create rules for space ship combat, which can be very difficult if it does not exist in the system).
Alternity actually provided everything for that, but the only problem with this was that it appeared and then pretty much disappeared quite quickly after that. It has since been replaced with the much more generic d20 Modern and d20 future, which I have played recently (though not since I left Adelaide). Also, while the rules were similar to Dungeons and Dragons, it was somewhat difficult to amalgamate the two systems since there were enough differences to end up making them incompatable. Further, when it comes to magic I prefer the Shadowrun system where spell casting tends to exhaust you; and while you can theoretically cast any number of spells that you like, the more you cast the more dangerous it becomes to your health. Such a system, unfortunately, does not exist in Dungeons and Dragons and I also suspect that it does not necessarily exist in Alternity either because when you come to science-fiction roleplaying you tend to discard magic in favourite of mind powers.
Okay, they may contain monsters, but who cares if you know what the monsters stats are (though surprise special abilities may add to the flavour) because that generally does not help you when you are in combat, and even then seasoned players tend to know all of the monsters off by heart anyway. However, the gamemasters books do tend to contain information which does really help run a game so you end up having to fork out another $60.00 for another book (though Magic the Gathering is a much better syphoner of money).
Personally I really can't remember what is in this book, though I suspect that it is still lying at the bottom of a crate in a shed at the back of my parents house 700 km from where I am writing this review (and the car trip takes about 8-9 hours, which the plane flight, including the time it takes me to leave home and get to the city (45 min) catch the airport shuttle bus (45 min, plus $15 ticket) to the airport, hang around the airport (1 to 1.5 hours) and then get on the plane and wait for it to take off (15 mins) and then fly to Adelaide (45 min), and then go from the airport to my parents house (45 min), it would bring the total up to 4 hours, so, as I have just proven, planes may be faster, but they are not all that fast (and somebody even suggested that using the same calculation, it is faster to get to San Fransisco by car than it is by plane, though only just).
Well, I've just spent an entire paragraph talking about anything but this book, but as I said, there is little I can say about this book that I have not said in the commentary on the Player's Handbook. Anyway, the only reason I ended up getting it was because it was going cheap (most likely a clearance sale). It never really took off, though I think I did try running a couple of games. However I can't remember how well it worked, and I must admit, I do prefer d20 Modern (and Future) though I only played a few sessions of that as well.
* An excellent rogue - I can't think of a better rogue in all of fiction, and yes I've seen Star Wars, so I know my literature
* A plot that manages to be interesting, tight, local, and finishes within this one book. I could write about each of those words "tight, local, interesting, one book" to help describe why I like the plot, but let me just repeat them and move on. Me likey plot, me good words making.
* The encounter with the dragon was particularly ... right. Without spoiling it, let me say that one does not simply slay a dragon.
So yes, I recommend this to anyone.
Meanwhile I'm disappointed that Mr. Baker's other books aren't as excellent, or anyone else's for that matter. Every Forgotten Realms novel gets the trilogy disease (or worse, follow-on trilogy), every story is a quest to save the entire realm, every clash of great powers cheapens those written before. c.f. Greenwood's projecting himself into the virile powerful Elminster, RA Salvatore writing Drizzt into some kind of weirdo avatar that will sever Toril from the shadowrealm, the Rage of Dragons series kills dragons by the hundred (so many that most are not even named), Melegaunt fighting an army of 10x powerful mages...only a few other books or series manage to show even some restraint.
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