david weber – Page 2

In the e-book: David Weber’s “The Sword of the South.”

Advance Reader’s Copy: Baen Books realized that there are quite a few people out there ready to shell out fifteen bucks to get their hands on the e-book version of an anticipated book, several months early. And not quibble about the fact that the final proofreading hasn’t been done yet; because, you know, several months early. I’m honestly surprised more publishers don’t do something like this, although I suppose that they have some ostensibly good reason for it. Or at least that they think that they do.

Anyway, The Sword of the South is the latest book in David Weber’s high fantasy series, and I’m quite fond of it. You can even pick up the first book in the series (Oath of Swords) for free. By all means: check them out.

Just finished “Fire Season”…

…which, truth be told, I’m reading despite the fact that Fire Season (The Star Kingdom) is Young Adult: it’s perfectly well-written, but I’m not entirely convinced that science fiction YA is the way to go to hook new readers. When I was a teenager I was reading the hard stuff… still, it’s part of David Weber’s Honorverse, so there you go.

More interesting, in its way, is that it looks like Baen Books‘ new arrangement with Amazon works out to: ten bucks for ‘hardcover;’ seven bucks for ‘softcover;’ and no change in ARC availability/price. Obviously, I’m going to miss the old six/four buck model; but this looks sustainable, and it’s still a good deal more reasonable than the other publishers’ God-we-hate-ebooks-and-want-them-to-die-in-a-grease-fire pricing model. Which may change, if Amazon can show them numbers showing the advantages of pricing your e-books to reflect the fact that you don’t have to actually print them out to sell them.

Moe Lane

Book of the Week: Out of the Dark.

Out of the Dark won’t be out for a couple of months, but it looks promising: alien invasion meets… well, it’s the Balkans and the word ‘predators’ is used, so we can just assume vampires/werewolves. Yeah, yeah, I’m a sucker for that sort of thing – but it’s David Weber, so there.

And we say Dasvidania to Android Karenina.

Book of the Week: Mission of Honor.

Yeah, the title and the author (David Weber) tells you that Mission of Honor is part of the Honor Harrington series, which I stopped struggling against trying to not buy in hardcover years ago. Because I am weak. So weak that I know that I’ll buy this – somehow – when it comes out next June.

And so we say farewell to Sentry Peak. It had a longer run than normal, at least.

Moe Lane

Book of the Week: Torch of Freedom.

Another one on the can’t-wait list: Torch of Freedom is Eric Flint and David Weber’s sequel to Crown of Slaves, which is itself one of the books of Weber’s Honorverse space opera series. Sort of Hornblower, only with starships. Suffice it to say that I buy these in hardcover, when I can.

So, it being Sunday, we replace the previous sequel (Imager’s Challenge: The Second Book of the Imager Portfolio) with this sequel.

Storm From The Shadows: The Sort-of, Kind-of, Not-Really Review.

I’ve just finished reading Storm from the Shadows – for those unfamiliar with it, it’s David Weber‘s latest book in his Honorverse series – and while it was good, there’s one potential problem: it definitely references events that are taking place in Weber/Flint’s Torch of Freedom, as well as ones in Mission of Honor. Neither book is out yet; ToF is not until November. It’s not even on Baen Books’ schedule, yet.

That being said, you don’t need to read ToF to understand what’s going on SFtS, although if you want to get involved in this Nelson/Horatio Hornblower science fiction series you’re best off starting with On Basilisk Station and chewing your way through. But that’s the nature of long, well-developed genre fiction series.

New Book of the Week: Storm From the Shadows

Short time for Lullaby to be on the list, but such are the vagaries of life.

I’m replacing it with David Weber’s Storm from the Shadows, which is the latest from the Honorverse. I was actually able to afford getting this one thanks to an early birthday present; it was a tough call between it and Escape from Hell, though. I’m about halfway through it, and it’s good.

Ooh. Pretty new site, with pretty, old ships.

It’s called Age of Sail, and it looks like a historical blog discussing precisely that.

I came into Age of Sail fiction from the science fiction end of it, actually: reading S.M. Stirling and David Weber got me reading Patrick O’Brian and C.S Forester (I’m currently halfway through A&E’s Horatio Hornblower series, and enjoying it muchly). And then, of course, there’s George MacDonald Fraser’s The Pyrates, which is required reading for anybody who loves old Hollywood swashbucklers (and who doesn’t). So I guess I’m explaining why this is going on the blogroll…

Moe Lane

PS: OK, one last one: Naomi Novik. For all your “Napoleonic warfare novels with dragons added; only, and this is really important to note, adding the dragons doesn’t make the whole thing suck horribly, or indeed at all” needs.