En ciencia ficción el pastiche de la novela náutica napoleónica es equivalente al pastiche tolkieniano en fantasía. La gran diferencia, empero, es que el segundo llegó a niveles extraordinariamente trillados y el primero desde sus inicios sonó muy forzado, búsquese donde se busque. De cualquier modo, pese a esta precondición, el pastiche napoleónico puede llegar a ser una novela disfrutable y hasta casi rayar en lo buena, como lo atestigua mi reseña de Midshipman’s Hope.tÉste no es el caso. El señor David Drake, famoso por una ciencia ficción militar un poco más estructurada, confiesa al principio de la edición en audio que éste es un homenaje a su editor, fanático de las novelas de Patrick O'Brian. Entonces, inspirado por obras como On Basilisk Station, la intención del autor era mover el foco del pastiche de este tipo de novelas de Hornblower a Aubrey / Maturin. Y como ya podemos imaginarnos, el fallo es espectacular.tEs un fallo espectacular esencialmente por dos razones: una es por no hacer ni la mitad de un esfuerzo coherente para que la ambientación y los detalles no suenen ridículos, y la otra es poner personajes de oeba. En el primer punto, sólo habré de decir que inventar navíos interestelares equipados con arboladura y velamen que viajan a través del ‘espacio esponja’ tuerce los límites de la especulación y no llega por ningún lado a suspender mi incredulidad. Sólo al final el señor Drake se pone técnico y comienza a intentar dar explicaciones en medio de la acción, pero no lo logra. Es más, hace que el lector se pierda.tSi hablamos de los personajes y en cómo se adaptan los arquetipos en los que están inspirados a un contexto espacial, puedo concluir que no lo hacen bien. En lo único que se parece el teniente Leary a Jack Aubrey es en estar pasado de peso y en tener un talento náutico sin parangón. Todo lo demás es tan soso y tan pedestre: un personaje con daddy issues nunca exploradostEn el caso de Adele Mundy, la bibliotecaria pobretona que debe servir de amiga incondicional y comparsa y recordatorio de lo humano al seco militar, la cosa no jala en absoluto. Pese a que con la narración de la tragedia de su familia busca dársele un lado más personal y sincero, Adele tampoco es un personaje ni profundo ni interesante. Si la intención del autor era hacer algo parecido a la serie de Aubrey / Maturin, entonces me siento con todo el derecho a exigir un poco de calidad en el rarísimo supuesto de que llegasen a hacer una película de esta novela. Soy muy fanático de la película de Capitán de Mar y Guerra, por lo que habría que buscar para tal papel a alguien que se parezca a Paul Bettany tanto física como en capacidad actoral. Y yo no me imagino a Cate Blanchett haciendo el papel de la aburrida Adele.tConclusión: ésta es ciencia ficción de lo más malita.
Ever since I met David Drake at World Fantasy 2009 in San Jose, I’ve been meaning to read one of his books. I must say, I picked a good one. With the Lightnings is the first book in his RCN Series, which is basically David Drake’s take on Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels. Think Napoleon-era naval battles and political intrigue … in space.Does it sound good already? Yeah, I thought so.I was a little surprised at first, because the first chapter started with a bunch of info dumps. It took until about the halfway mark for the action to really start, but when it did, it was awesome. 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.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. You can tell that David Drake has experience in the military–lots of experience.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. The language was colorful, but when the soldiers swore, their language had a bite to it that went beyond the actual words. The people felt gritty, but very real.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. He 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.I could definitely see that in With the Lightnings–it’s one of the things that made the book so fun to read. Yes, 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).With the Lightnings is a great space opera action/adventure story. After reading it, I really want to read more books in the RCN series. If you want a good, fun military sf adventure story, this is a great one to pick up.This review first appeared on my blog, One Thousand and One Parsecs.
What do You think about With The Lightnings (2000)?
I picked this up because Eric Raymond mentioned the series in his review of the latest addition. He said:Drake’s sources are no mystery to anyone who has read Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey-Maturin series; Daniel Leary and his companion-in-arms Adele Mundy are obvious takes on the bumptious Jack Aubrey and physician/naturalist/spy Stephen Maturin. Drake expends great ingenuity in justifying a near-clone of the Napoleonic-era British Navy in a far future with FTL drives. Well, I'm a fan of the Patrick O'Brien series as well as far future sci-fi and since the Kindle edition of this book was reasonably priced, I picked it up. And it's a decent find, though this first book is more an establishment of the premise than anything else. Indeed, the first half of the book lagged a bit as Daniel and Adele are on completely different, orthogonal, tracks to start off with and bringing them together takes some time (and no, not romantically—though that's a possibility later on, I suppose).Once things started blowing up, though, the book moves right along. I enjoyed the characters and setting, but the action was absolutely stellar. I particularly liked how Drake handled some of the emotional/relationship landmines set in the earlier parts of the book and how he turned them into opportunities for the core group to bond rather than the expected fractures.Anyway, I enjoyed the book, but that slow start keeps it from being any more than an average read on its own merits. That said, it was certainly good enough for me to pick up the next.
—Jacob Proffitt
The start of a series I shall now hunt down, With the Lightnings is military sci-fi (sort of--mostly an unexpected commando operation set against a broader backdrop which I expect to come into play later) built upon character. In this case, two main characters: a charming and slightly underbaked lieutenant and the exiled librarian he falls in with (or vice versa). In fairness to David Weber, his books had more characterization back before all his developed characters were spread one or two to a ship (though whose fault is that?), but Drake has always been interested in showing the effects of the grand galactic strategy on individual soldiers--the grunt's-eye view, if you will.The first 70 pages establish characters and setting while making you seriously wonder whether the two main characters will end up dueling each other to the death (not exactly a natural "meet-cute"). Drake avoids the technical-manual exposition for the most part, and allows you to slowly assemble a sense of what's going on.Bring in the sequels...
—David
I didn't like this book to start with it. It started slow with a lot of world building, and I thought that Leary was a bit of foppish cad and Adele was a cold bitch. As the book moved on, I started liking them a bit more, and the action really lit up in the last 200 pages (400 pages over all). Not the best SF I've read, but enjoyable. I liked the book enough to read the second one. I won't put Drake up there with Moon, Ringo, Weber, Shepherd, or Bujold because his action just isn't at their level throughout his books, but his character development and plot development are very solid. If you like world building and some different ideas on space age weapons, then Drake is a good writer for you to look into.
—Roberta
