Space Opera by the numbers. So many books follow the traditional ‘captain down on his luck’ ‘fight against a secret force and a corrupt army / government’ etc. etc. etc. and this is just another one. Still, this series made it into book seven (or eight?) by now.
Narration
Fine, no comments.
The Verdict
Okayish.
Reasonably well written, but I find quite a few annoying little details that bother the engineer in me. So no, better stick to the original Harrington novels, where David Weber did all of this a bit better. Or try Elliot Kay.
The laws of nature
I would like to, however, point out a problem with (most) Space Opera, and that it isn't always technically or scientifically 'correct'. I understand the SF part of things, because that is part of the fun. But technical solutions should make sense or seem feasible, at least.
One of the practical problems of space battles is the distance. Ships need to get close to do combat, and even then it will be very hard for one ship to hit the other one with a ballistic object, such as a bullet. Things are even worse with 'fixed guns', such as a non-adjustable rail-gun or coil-gun. Such a weapon would have to be aligned with the target by moving the whole ship. With the crazy distances lining up such a weapon is pretty much impossible.
Gun turrets may work but only if they spread an insane amount of bullets / projectiles right in the path of the incoming missile. Again, distances would cause troubles...
It makes space battles hard, unless you have intelligent, readjusting missiles, or weapons that fire at (near) lightspeed.
Oh well, it must take an engineer like me to be bothered by these things...
More
(Dapper #191 / TellTales #117)
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