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The Reformer | Rating | |
| B | |||
| S. M. Stirling and David Drake | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| The General | The Forge, The Hammer, The Anvil, The Steel, The Sword, The Chosen, The Reformer | ||
Mankind once spanned the galaxy in a great empire. But internal strife, corruption, and decay shattered the great civilization. Now all that remains are scattered planets occupied by Man, one and all reduced to varying primitive states. And on Hafardine, the empire of Vanbert holds sway with its sword-armed legions. But Adrian Gellert is about to set society on its ear. He will introduce new weapons, tactics, and machines, with the help of his brother Esmond - and Center and Raj Whitehall, of course, who have chosen him to be the planet's hidden savior.
Overall, I liked this book. But it wasn't long before I started noticing things. The first of them is that Vanbert equals Rome. And I mean equals, not is like. They have the same governing system, a colloseum with gladitorial games and public executions, the same military strategies, the same way to bathe, and even a unique word for killing every tenth man. That two cultures, millenia and light-years distant from each other, might independently develop and employ some of the same aspects of society is believable, but all of them? It stretched belief more than a little.
But that wasn't too difficult to ignore, really, once I put my mind to it. More problematic was the sheer speed of the story. For the first half, maybe two-thirds of the book, events zip by. It seems that no sooner does Adrian "invent" gunpowder than he has a troop of fully armed grennadiers able to chuck a bomb with their slings, with nearly perfect accuracy. He shows his patron a steam-powered model of a boat, and it's only a bit over a hundred pages later that one is being used in battle. The authors can and occasionally do declare time has passed, but even with some jump cuts and space breaks it just doesn't feel like that's so. And there are many other such instances in the book. Esmond's lady love Nanya barely is seen, and their romance declared rather than displayed, despite how much of an effect she has on the man. Events go from being considered to being done with little planning or preparing being shown. Another fifty or even a hundred pages might have been a wise addition.
The other flaw is much deeper, if less obvious. Namely, I cannot see how introducing gunpowder weaponry sets Hafardine back on the road to the stars. On Bellevue, science and technology were advancing, albeit slowly thanks to the oppressive, corrupt Church; the main problem there was the constant warfare using up resources and killing the occasional craftsman. But on Hafardine, it is not just society that has stagnated but even thinking. Introducing different and better ways to kill each other will upset the status quo, yes, but the only result I think likely is an accelerated pace of decay. What was needed was not gunpowder or even steam engines but the Scientific Method itself, by which the entire world can relearn how to discover and invent, how to put things together in a wonderful new way and know how it works and why. All Adrian and the rest are doing is adding more things to the military toy chest.
And yet, as I said, I did like the book. Although I think more of the development process should have been depicted, what was shown was very engaging. The battles are the heart of the story, and they're done very well indeed, as one might expect of this series. The entreaties the brothers make to certain people to help bank them politically and financially are also interesting, as it displays some very shrewd thinking. The pair also change, neither one the same man they were at the novel's start.
The story is, unfortunately, not complete. Not only is Hafardine not on its way up the technological ladder at book's end, it's not even implied that they will be. In fact, the story ends with yet more clearly to be done, and the brothers off to foreign lands to do it. The tale absolutely begs for a direct sequel in a way The Chosen did not, and there's nothing in the book that hints one is coming. There is no "Part 1" on the cover, or "To be continued" inside, or any similar devices. It would be a very poor ending to stop where it does, but it just might. Only time will tell.
I loved this series, and still do. Drake and Stirling together make a wonderful team, and I enjoyed the book even with its flaws. Other than a continuation of this story, though, I feel the setting probably should be retired. Describing a fourth world's barbarous fallen state, and having Center and Raj co-opt a native to uplift it to a high tech civiliazation would just be redundant at this point. Unless some serious twists were added - an alien race, for instance, or showing two of the uploifted worlds finding each other in space and depicting the stresses and joys of reunion - it would simply be more of the same. But I could stand it in this one case, and I could stand it in future books if it completed the story on Hafardine. And I'd still recommend other fans of Raj Whitehall try and do the same. Just be aware that it's not perfect. Heck, it's not even done.
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