Michael Z. WilliamsonBesprekingen

Well, I suppose you might like this if you are a libertarian extremist who can't get enough red meat. For the rest of us, this is a frustratingly preachy book that contains lots of politics and libertarian wish fulfillment but frequently forgets to, well, tell a story.

The target audience seems to be geeky young guys who just read Ayn Rand. It's basically a valentine to liberarianism; the good guys are a libertarian society that can do no wrong (and, of course, libertarian-ism is the answer to every human problem ever seen); the bad guys are a straw-man caricature of modern capitalism. There's lots of loving description of military equipment. And the women are all loose and have lots of sex with everyone. The libertarian society that's supposed to be the be-all and end-all of politics is not very plausible; for instance, as you read, see if you can tell how the society deals with kids and the elderly. Anyway, target audience: geeky young guys who can't get enough Ayn Rand; it's certainly not for people who like any amount of nuance or subtlety in their reading.

Sadly, the book is not very entertaining. The characters are boring. The plot doesn't get started until halfway through this already very long book, and even then it's just weak military SF without any particularly interesting tactics, strategy, or cleverness. Here's a tip: if you read the book, skip the first 25 chapters and start at chapter 26 (yes, that's page 365 in the paperback version). You won't miss much, and this will jump you into the start of the military action. But better yet, don't bother; the book isn't worth your time.

A diplomatic process tome with none of the fire of the previous books.

As a third book in the series this is a departure from the keen military zeitgeist of the proceeding books. It is a process tome on first contact diplomacy. As the young Chinran is present but hardly seen, I kept mentally filling in on her unwritten adventures with the Ishkul -- to bad Williamson didn't record them!
As I like process books al la Heinlein and Weber, I found this one a mediocre attempt, merely a filler in the Freehold saga.

A solid read, and significantly more satisfying than I expected of the primary character.

Good fun fluff.

From ARC, so I expect some marginal tightening up before it actually drops. One of Williamson's better books - right up there with Freehold, really, though in a style I like marginally less. Particularly well crafted escalation and transition.

Fun mostly-fluff, with plenty of reasons to check history and various mechanics of things described. I enjoy fiction that happens to drop bits of useful knowledge that are easy to expand on.

I reread this every couple years or so. One of my favorites.

In my mind, this anthology, like ‘Forged in Blood’ before it, sets a new standard for single universe anthologies. Not only are all of the stories well crafted and shaped to fit, but they are also woven together into a whole that becomes greater than the sum. Three narrative threads are used to show how and where each tale fits within the greater story. The individual tales are made more a part of events than I have otherwise seen.

To make a comparison, most anthologies seem like a concert. All of the music is being performed from the same stage by the same musicians, and there may be other relationships between selections such as theme or composer, but each piece exists as a separate and wholly distinct work. So, too, do most anthologies seem made of separate pieces, somewhat harmonious, but distinct. This anthology is more like a musical. Each piece is separate but informs the whole, and is supported by a recurrent theme that drives the narrative. The simplicity of this description belies the complexity and virtuosity of the endeavor.

I normally wouldn't rate an anthology so highly. There are always a few stories that are weaker than the others.

I don't feel that way about this one.

This is about the history of a sword. Not a sword of kings, but a sword of warriors.

The construction of the anthology is so clever and tight.

Bah. I'm gushing.

I like stories of transportation of a group to the stone-age and reading how they cope with the environment and creatures and peoples they encounter.

To a certain extent this book satisfies this need but the book dwells too much on sexual frustration and the women constantly being worried about being raped by others including their time travel companions and I get it....but to revisit this over and over again in a 1000 page novel gets tiresome.

One thing that bugged me is the constant reference to military acronyms in the book. There is about a 10 page glossary on them but it is a nuisance flipping back and forth.

Also the author uses first and last name of the 10 people freely throughout the book and it is confusing... it is like there are 20 people in the group, not ten.

Sometimes he starts a paragraph with the word he or she but there is no reference to who he or she is until a paragraph or too.

It can feel like "they did this, they did that" but overall it is an average read with little development of character.½

Williamson appears to have been saving comments he posts around the internet thinking it is has inherent value of 2.99. Having Kindle Unlmited, it was a free read. This book is comprised of one to maybe four line comments he believes are witty and insightful. I can't say I found his comments to be either. I expected more from a published writer. William F. Buckley, Jr. he is not let alone Nitzsche.

I have given out very few one star reviews. I normally just don't say anything but this book has been nominated for a major award. It should not have been nominated as is seriously subpar.

This is a Best Related Work Hugo nominee.

It's a collection of tweets from Williamson's Twitter feed. It's decently written, if you consider it as a collection of tweets.

It's not witty, informative, or in any way entertaining. Fatally for a Best Related Work Hugo nominee, it's not sf-related. The tone of it can pretty fairly be deduced from the fact of it's publisher: Patriarchy Press.

Do I have to say it? Not recommended.

Freehold is one of my favorite books of all time and had a strong impact on my decision to be more a libertarian.

It is the story of Kendra Pacelli who is wrongly accused of a crime on Earth and is forced to immigrate to the Libertarian utopia of Freehold.

There are basically two parts to the book. The first part is classic mellui story. The point of the story is not so much character growth and change, but to move around the setting and show the reader what it is like. This is the type of story [b:the Lord of the Rings|34|The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Part 1)|J.R.R. Tolkien|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1156043001s/34.jpg|3204327] is. It isn't about change in Frodo, it is about making Frodo travel across Middle Earth so everyone can see all of this land.

Kendra shows us what it is like to go from a future Earth to a country where personal freedom and personal responsibility are valued most high. Freehold has almost no laws, and very very little government at all. Taxes are in the form of a small voluntary payment which entitles you to see a judge to resolve conflict. All crimes are seen as civil suits, with the accused required to make right the damages done.

Personal freedoms mean almost everyone is armed because they want to me. There are no traffic laws, but you are responsible for any accidents you cause. Drugs are totally unregulated, but you are just as responsible for anything you while under the influence as you are sober.

The Libertarian ideals extend out of government and into peoples personal life, which is reflected in the book as well. Kendra ends up in a three way relationship with both a male and a female lover. Ends up a prostitute for a night and not liking it, though it was done freely.

The second half of the book chronicles the conflict and ultimately war between Earth's government in the form of the United Nations and Freehold. At the beginning of this build up of conflict Kendra joins the Freehold military, a small but highly and practically trained force. This is the transition from melliu to war story. It is still a melliu as Kendra goes through military training, but when the war begins melliu drops to the back burner and we experience the life of a guerrilla fighter resisting an oppressive invader.

I loved the first half of the book, and like many other readers would love to see such a place exsist. I'd immigrate. The second half of the book was much harder to take as it shows you an unromantic, realistic picture of war.

The overall writing is good. The melliu is great, the story good.

I've read the first half of the book at least a dozen times in the last year. The whole book probably half that because when I get to the transition I can't stop reading. That's the sign of a really well written book to me.

And the best thing for you reader is you can read the whole thing for free online. It is part of the Baen free library.

http://www.webscription.net/10.1125/Baen/0743471792/0743471792.htm

I'd love to get my hands on a hard cover copy of this book if they exist.

Take a poorly thought out Libertarian utopia, populate it with improbably good people, add some social aspects straight from the sweaty fantasies of teenage boys, array it against the Stupid Evil Welfare State of Earth, write a lot of shoot-'em-up while indulging in what appears to be a serious man-crush on Heinlein, and there you have it: summer pulp. Even if you like military science fiction, I'd probably recommend you go elsewhere.½

I haven't posted many reviews lately, but this title was superb. I listened to it as an audiobook from Audible. The reader is excellent and the plot and characterization are full and very engaging. If you like time travel and military fiction, don't miss it,

This review is actually the review I wrote for the first book in the series, Freehold. I did not finish The Weapon, as I view it as just as bad, if not considerably worse than the first book and have the same complaints as I did with the first book. I have problems with Williamson's world views and the politics he espouses in his books and just don't want to read any more of his books. I believe this will be my last. Furthermore, I just don't enjoy his books. I don't think they're that well written. When you get to the action, it can be decent, but the downtime is poorly handled. The author needs seasoning. Here's my original review.

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Since this book has a 4.01 rating on Goodreads, I started off reading it with high hopes. Especially as it’s the beginning of a series that is highly rated. And the back cover synopsis made it sound interesting. But as I got into it, I started wondering about it. A lot of minutia, but where’s the action? Much detail, but is anything going to happen? And I started wondering about the author. I read a lot of military sci fi. Even though I’m largely a liberal and many if not most military sci fi authors are conservatives, I don’t mind it because most don’t get didactic or dogmatic in preaching their political viewpoints, ie David Weber, Chris Bunch, etc. They just write good military sci fi. But occasionally you run across screamingly conservative Tea Party/Libertarian nutjobs who preach at you and who shove their fucking politics down your throat repeatedly and that drives me nuts. John Ringo’s one of those, which is why I no longer read his work. Well, apparently Michael Z. Williamson is one of these types of authors too, and surprise, he’s collaborated with Ringo! This author has a serious Libertarian bent that he shoves and shoves and it gets really old. He makes sure we know he loves Ayn Rand. He shows evil fascist Earth as the gigantic polluted, bureaucratic, militaristic, overcrowded, welfare state, big brother state, paranoid, UN dominated, global world it has become and compares it with Utopian world Freehold, where our protagonist Kendra, has escaped to from Earth. On Freehold, there is no government. There are no taxes, although people are allowed to donate if they want. Yet, “government” services exist and run well. Somehow. Magically. I’m assuming education, healthcare, fire and police services exist and are free? Public transportation? Not sure. Everyone gets jobs. The pay is decent. Everyone gets housing of some sort, not great, but not bad. And everyone packs! EVERYONE! This is to avoid rape, although there is virtually no crime on Freehold. And as the author argues, vapidly, and more importantly, in the capital city of several million, this is to protect yourself against the scary wild animals that wander into the city of SEVERAL MILLION – animals that could get to the city parks in the center and eat you. So you need to pack heat to kill them. Yep. Kendra finds out real fast that she needs a gun.

Kendra meets a new male friend on day one who is the nicest, kindest, sweetest gentleman who ever existed and acts as the dashing hero for and to her, and she soon meets a nice, sweet, beautiful woman, who happens to be both ex-military and a female “escort,” an occupation on Freehold that is looked highly upon. The three become lovers. You see, public nudity is part of the status quo on Freehold, as is bisexuality. It’s natural, even though it’s new for Kendra.

There are a number of problems with this book. For one thing, it’s too damn long. The author could have cut it in half and still made a partially decent story out of it. In line with that, nothing happens in the first 250-300 pages. Kendra spends time playing tourist, letting her new friends spoil her and engaging in sexual interplay with them. She eventually joins the military, just in time for an invasion from Earth, for no apparent reason, but that’s halfway through the book. And of course, the book is one long preachy, didactic, dogmatic, rambling discourse on the evils of liberal viewpoints and philosophy and the wonderful aspects of the great Utopian Libertian world that Williamson would have us all envision with him. Which is overly simplistic and pure fantasy.

For the life of me, I don’t see how this book merits a 4+ rating. I guess it’s all the conservative military sci fi lovers out there. Which is a little scary. Conservative military vets? Am I just generalizing? Probably. However, I’ve seen a ton of one and two star reviews complaining of the propaganda, dogma, preaching, politics, etc., so I know that I’m not the only one by far. I’m one of many. A ton of people who read military sci fi don’t want politics of any type shoved down their throats. I’m one of them. That’s not why we read this genre. We just want to read great military sci fi. Is that too much to ask? So, one star and not recommended. Also, I have the sequel and I won’t be reading it, unfortunately, because I had been looking forward to it. Oh well.

Since this book has a 4.01 rating on Goodreads, I started off reading it with high hopes. Especially as it’s the beginning of a series that is highly rated. And the back cover synopsis made it sound interesting. But as I got into it, I started wondering about it. A lot of minutia, but where’s the action? Much detail, but is anything going to happen? And I started wondering about the author. I read a lot of military sci fi. Even though I’m largely a liberal and many if not most military sci fi authors are conservatives, I don’t mind it because most don’t get didactic or dogmatic in preaching their political viewpoints, ie David Weber, Chris Bunch, etc. They just write good military sci fi. But occasionally you run across screamingly conservative Tea Party/Libertarian nutjobs who preach at you and who shove their fucking politics down your throat repeatedly and that drives me nuts. John Ringo’s one of those, which is why I no longer read his work. Well, apparently Michael Z. Williamson is one of these types of authors too, and surprise, he’s collaborated with Ringo! This author has a serious Libertarian bent that he shoves and shoves and it gets really old. He makes sure we know he loves Ayn Rand. He shows evil fascist Earth as the gigantic polluted, bureaucratic, militaristic, overcrowded, welfare state, big brother state, paranoid, UN dominated, global world it has become and compares it with Utopian world Freehold, where our protagonist Kendra, has escaped to from Earth. On Freehold, there is no government. There are no taxes, although people are allowed to donate if they want. Yet, “government” services exist and run well. Somehow. Magically. I’m assuming education, healthcare, fire and police services exist and are free? Public transportation? Not sure. Everyone gets jobs. The pay is decent. Everyone gets housing of some sort, not great, but not bad. And everyone packs! EVERYONE! This is to avoid rape, although there is virtually no crime on Freehold. And as the author argues, vapidly, and more importantly, in the capital city of several million, this is to protect yourself against the scary wild animals that wander into the city of SEVERAL MILLION – animals that could get to the city parks in the center and eat you. So you need to pack heat to kill them. Yep. Kendra finds out real fast that she needs a gun.

Kendra meets a new male friend on day one who is the nicest, kindest, sweetest gentleman who ever existed and acts as the dashing hero for and to her, and she soon meets a nice, sweet, beautiful woman, who happens to be both ex-military and a female “escort,” an occupation on Freehold that is looked highly upon. The three become lovers. You see, public nudity is part of the status quo on Freehold, as is bisexuality. It’s natural, even though it’s new for Kendra.

There are a number of problems with this book. For one thing, it’s too damn long. The author could have cut it in half and still made a partially decent story out of it. In line with that, nothing happens in the first 250-300 pages. Kendra spends time playing tourist, letting her new friends spoil her and engaging in sexual interplay with them. She eventually joins the military, just in time for an invasion from Earth, for no apparent reason, but that’s halfway through the book. And of course, the book is one long preachy, didactic, dogmatic, rambling discourse on the evils of liberal viewpoints and philosophy and the wonderful aspects of the great Utopian Libertian world that Williamson would have us all envision with him. Which is overly simplistic and pure fantasy.

For the life of me, I don’t see how this book merits a 4+ rating. I guess it’s all the conservative military sci fi lovers out there. Which is a little scary. Conservative military vets? Am I just generalizing? Probably. However, I’ve seen a ton of one and two star reviews complaining of the propaganda, dogma, preaching, politics, etc., so I know that I’m not the only one by far. I’m one of many. A ton of people who read military sci fi don’t want politics of any type shoved down their throats. I’m one of them. That’s not why we read this genre. We just want to read great military sci fi. Is that too much to ask? So, one star and not recommended. Also, I have the sequel and I won’t be reading it, unfortunately, because I had been looking forward to it. Oh well.

Reasonably coherent anthology in the form of a novelette. Some stories more interesting than others.

Better To Beg Forgiveness is a mess because the author is a loser. Not only a bad writer with suspect military credentials, but a hate-filled agenda where everyone is to be mistrusted, from the UN to the military chain of command to the regular army to the police to civilians in general and so on. In fact, this book is something like Somalia in space. The featureless bad guys are called "skinnies." I thought I was watching Black Hawk Down. Hey, this book was published in 2007. Somalia was long over by then. Which begs the next question. Why does the author use the phrase "property stealing communists" to describe some people? That’s even more out of date. Um, right wing much, Williamson? Watch a lot of Fox News? Are you sure your name isn’t John Ringo?

The only “science fiction” aspect to this book is the action takes place on another planet and the mercenaries have to travel through space to get there. How they accomplish that really isn’t described. Of course not. It’s only sci fi. Is it a spaceship? A flying saucer? A rocket? How the hell do they get there, Williamson? Otherwise, they ride in Volvos, shoot H&K guns and AKs, use regular explosive devices, etc. Where’s the “science fiction” in that scenario? What exactly is sci fi about this book? Frankly, this book is a fraud and it’s utter bullshit! To make matters worse, the author is so caught up in detail and in proving that ex-military contractors are “obviously” superior to military, regular army, police, etc., that he spends what seems like about 15 pages having his team execute a ballet-like dance of epic proportions in guarding their principle as he walks from his building to his vehicle, while they move in carefully choreographed steps, two at a time, each moving up to replace the next. It’s fucking beautiful, man. I bet he could fill a 900-page book with just these descriptions. Shit. What a pile of horseshit.

I got about 100 pages into this book and found that I just couldn’t get into it, obviously, no matter how much I tried. I like mercenary books. I love sci fi. I like huge odds. I hate stupidity and boredom and this book has plenty of that. I also hate feeling like I’m being manipulated by some right wing, Fox loving asshat with a political agenda for no good reason, ie, not to advance the story line. Don’t misunderstand. Sure, I’m a liberal, but I’m a gun loving liberal and that’s not an oxymoron. My wife and I are Democratic voters who own lots of guns and like to go to the range, etc. We just don’t like Fox News and the ilk who preach its gospel. So sure, I could have given this book more of a chance, but why? One hundred pages is more than enough to sell me on a book. If you haven’t done it by then, that’s all you get – I’m moving on to something better. If I want good military sci fi, I’ll read David Weber or Chris Bunch. As for me, Michael Z. Williamson will be permanently avoided from here on out. Lousy writer.

Enjoyed this very much! The author did a great job juggling a number of very different characters, and showed them using skills that allowed them to survive during their time displacement. I really liked the way living conditions were discussed and addressed, as well as discussion of other historical peoples. The one thing that bugged me was one character who was always convinced she was going to be raped at any minute. That got tiring fast. I have heard rumor of a sequel, however, and would definitely listen to more of this story!

While I am sensitive to Baen wanting to keep the legacy of Heinlein a part of their stable, the choice of Williamson to do so is wrong. You know that Williamson is trying to evoke Heinlein from the number of times Heinlein is mentioned. Heinlein however would not have written this, even when writing the Juvenils.

The book only really starts after you have read more than half and you realize that the it is a to Red Dawn, the movie that Milieus directed, but set in this pseudo Libertarian world that the first half of the book is the propaganda advertisement for but so much worse than Neil Smith ever did. And that is the fallacy that you have to buy into, that the Earth we live on would be so screwed up that they couldn't handle a future society, and that in response one world would have the perfect Libertarian world. Except the truth is that Libertarianism when practiced on a significant scale is just a fantasy that wouldn't work, else, being humans, we already would have seen it working. We are good like that which Williamson who shows his own juvenile writing style probably doesn't have enough critical thought to realize. (When writing and having one previous error in a paragraph that then uses the word fuller, instead of more fully, shows that Williamson doesn't have an adults grasp of English since fuller does not mean that something is more full and immediately stops one reading in mid stream to decipher the authors intent. That is just one of several mistakes of the use of language)

But then to show us that we have been searching for a theme amidst too much prepubescent sex fantasies that have so little to do with a story but to just provide titillation along with the push for propaganda without clear direction that is the first half of the book and giving us nothing shows that the last half of the book is where the story lays hidden. Again trying to emulate Heinlein and failing since Heinlein would have had us understand the theme from the beginning. We then see that if you watched Red Dawn, you would know the story, and the anticlimax accounts for far too much as well. Our heroine could have led us, but our writer made the villains too stupid, and the heroes too able that what conflict and drama there are is cliche and forced.

Amazon kept thinking I would like this, and my library is framed with Baen books I read and reread. This will not be one of them.½

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2469904.html

This is a collection of thoughts, mostly Tweets and comments to other people's blog posts I think, on the ballot for Best Related Work, where the slates managed to fill all five available slots.

Wisdom from my Internet is a really bad book. I will admit that I disagree with about 90% of Williamson's political statements; but even in the few cases where I don't, his style is just not very funny. More objectively, I've got a quarter of the way through and if there has been any actual reference to SF I have missed it. I prefer my Best Related Works to actually be, well, related. I don't think I will bother with the rest.

How interesting that the author is a mate of the slatemongers, and that it was not recommended by a single contributor to the crowdsourcing exercise (which we are repeatedly told was "100% open" and "democratic"), yet ended up on both slates anyway! It has reinforced my intention to vote "No Award" for this entire category.

This nomination really shows up the bad faith of those behind the slates. For all their complaints about cliques, political messages and works getting nominated which are of poor quality and are't sfnal enough, here they have done exactly what they accuse the imaginary cabal of doing. It is simply shameful.½

An uneven effort at world-building by multiple authors, Exiled: Clan of the Claw imagines a world where the dinosaurs weren't wiped out, but continued to evolve into the Lishkash, mind-controlling kinglet/gods. Meanwhile, felines evolved into the clan-based society called Mrem, deadly enemies to the Lishkash. After an inland plain is inundated by rising seawater, the Mrem are cut off from their kin in the North and must trek around the new sea in order to survive.

Of the four novellas that make up the book, the second, authored by S. M. Stirling, is the best, closely followed by the fourth, authored by Jody Lynn Nye and John Ringo. I thought the other two focused on action and military tactics to the detriment of character development.½

The Stirling story was as ever excellent. It falls off from there. My biggest gripe is that it badly needed a continuity editor - the key mcguffins changed in power from story to story. Shared world are a problem that way. Thus the final story from Nye and Ringo [which might have been fine on its own] kept giving me whiplash in terms of how the world worked so that it lost that willful suspension of disbelief that makes genre work. I will buy anything Stirling writes and normally like the others. This book is for completist fans of the particular authors.

More of a character study than anything else. The ending is a bit too short and the fact that the artifact anture was kept secret until the end is unnecesary really.