2008 alternate-history science fiction war story. During the Battle of
the Java Sea in 1942, two antiquated four-stacker destroyers sail into
a squall… and come out somewhere else.
Maybe I just shouldn't bother reading books like this. It came
recommended by people who seemed to have had many of the same problems
I did with Weapons of Choice, and it's clearly a love letter from
the author to the Clemson-class destroyers aboard which most of the
action takes place. So far so good.
The world into which they're flung is one with identical geography,
but no humans – rather, there are two other sorts of intelligent life,
one descended from lemurs, the other from velociraptors or their kin.
Naturally, they fight each other. Naturally, the four-stacker is a
vastly more powerful weapon than anything they can produce themselves.
So the Americans have to decide which side to fight on… which takes
less than a page, and is made rather easier by the raptors attacking
them without provocation. Meanwhile the lemuroids have a culture best
described as "generic tribal".
Eh, it's all right as far as the action goes I suppose (though it does
have a tendency to skip over the descriptions once the battle is
decided), but it's so thoroughly lacking in character that I really
couldn't feel any enthusiasm for anyone here. There aren't just Navy
men on board, which is plausible enough given the chaos of the
evacuation of the Dutch East Indies: there are some Army Air Corps
pilots of whom the leader is an Antagonist, there's a convenient
petroleum geologist who knows where to find and how to refine the oil
that can keep this ship moving, and there are some Navy nurses
presumably to provide an eventual love interest; but when people here
get one character trait they're already beating the average.
There are ten more books in this series, with another due out soon,
but I just felt absolutely no sense of engagement with this parade of
stereotypes. Many people who aren't me think these books are
wonderful, so maybe you will too. Followed by Crusade.
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