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Fateful Lightning | Rating | |
| A | |||
| William R. Forstchen | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| The Lost Regiment | Rally Cry, Union Forever, Terrible Swift Sword, Fateful Lightning, Battle Hymn, Never Sound Retreat, A Band of Brothers, Men of War, Down to the Sea | ||
The Replublic is in trouble. The Merki have pressed in hard, forcing an evacuation of the entire state of Rus. Luckily, they were forced to halt by their own traditions when their leader was killed, and the humans spent the time well. They've gone hundreds of miles across open grassland, burning everything behind them as they travel. They've picked their battleground and prepared it. And they've trained more troops, put out more weapons from their factories, and invented whole new devices to aid them in their desperate struggle. But will it be enough when the horde charges, vengence foremost in their minds?
By now, politics is almost nonexistant as a story element. Technology, too, is diminished, though not quite as badly. This is almost entirely a story of battles and stories of how individual characters manage within this time of crisis. These personal tales were present in previous books, of course, but always as part of the plots. Here the stories of Tamuka's rise to power, Hawthorne's personal demons, and Ferguson's personal romance seem to stand on their own within the greater story, and indeed are a nice counterpoint to it. Without those storylines the book would be all troop movements, logistical planning, and pitched battles.
On the other hand, Forstchen spends a lot of time - a lot of time - building up to the climax. There's a few minor skirmishes, but they are clearly that: minor. There really is no conflict of significance until the very last one. I felt that at least one real battle would have spanned the wait nicely.
Yet that climax, those last hundred pages or more, made up for the lack. These pages were, to put it simply, excellent. The fighting was not constant even then, but the pressure was always on, and the battle had its own miniature climaxes as this or that crucial post is threatened or even overrun by Merki. It was actually difficult to put the book down in the last quarter of the novel.
Of course, this book would lose a lot of its impact if the reader hadn't read any of the previous ones. Reading them in order is always recommended, and it always helps in fully understanding a series, but it is here that information from other books really starts getting crucial. This is essentially part two of a long war, not a complete story in itself. But those who have read the first ones should not be disappointed with this book. Especially when they reach the end.
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