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Down to the Sea | Rating | |
| C | |||
| 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 | ||
It's been twenty years since the last of the Horde Wars ended. The Republic has expanded and now includes the Nippon, the Cartha, and the Chin, as well as a few refugees from other lands. But there are signs of unrest. The Bantag have been relegated to a kind of reservation, and the treaty states that they are not allowed to create modern industry or leave the area. But the horde has hunted most of the animals within their lands to extinction, and will begin to starve unless some part of the policy is changed. Meanwhile, across the great ocean to the south an ironclad comes across a sea battle between two sides of the Kazan. They are wrapping up a civil war, and now must find a new enemy lest internal power struggles wrack their empire again. The obvious enemy to unite the realm: the Republic.
The book has a good start, reintroducing readers to the characters and setting as it informs them of the major events of the past two decades. It is done in such a way as to not bore returning fans while still providing needed background information to new readers. But the very next chapter is a bit more problematic. How is it that the Kazan have ironclads - with turrets, yet - of a quality and effective range that is far beyond what the Republic is capable of? By the wording, it was clearly not a new development, either. Also, it is quickly revealed that the empire have been breeding humans for favorable qualities in the same way that they breed horses. Thanks to this, it was a bit confusing early on whether some of the characters that we meet in the empire are human or Kazan. It isn't helped by several important names looking very similar. The issue is cleared up, yes, as is the matter of the advanced technology, but not until almost a third of the book is past. By then, it was much too late. The information is imparted in a few simple paragraphs, which left me wondering why Forstchen couldn't possibly put them a bit earlier.
That's not the only problem, though, not by far. It was revealed in an earlier book that the dead military inventor Ferguson had sketched out a mechanical device to compute matematical problems. I thought it was fine, then; Ferguson is smart, and this put him squarely on a level with the genius Babbage, inventor of a mechanical computer. But now it is revealed that Ferguson was inspired by Babbage, and I cry foul. I found it a major stretch to imagine that an engineer from Maine would have even heard of Babbage, much less taken a close enough look at his work to be able to attempt a duplication. Possible, I admit, but it was just too much for my suspension of disbelief. Also, there were internal contradictions in the novel that made me wonder how much Forstchen was keeping track of his own exposition. At first we are told the Kazan technology came from visitors from Jurak's world, excpe a hundred years ago. But, no, then we're told it was two hundred years, and it was they who suggested selectively breeding humans. No, this breeding has been going on for ten generations, which is two to three hundred years. But wait, the arena, in which the peak of humanity is shown off for the amusement of the Kazan, is an event that has been going on for five hundred years. Pick one and stick to it!
Despite all of this, the book still might have received a decent grade. After all, the writing is good, the characterizations are excellent, and it's not the same old thing. More importantly, none of those problems really affects anything. But there are two that do. Firstly, technological progress for the humans seems to have halted after the Bantag War. It's twenty years later but there are few, if any, advances in weaponry or technology in general that I could find. Also, the Republic is once again in danger of splitting into seperate states over this war. The Chin want to annihilate the Bantag, and others are upset that the Republic isn't more prepared for a fight than it is, even though it was they who reportedly hamstrung the army. It's way, way too early for this to happen.
The book wasn't all bad. Battles took a welcome back seat to politics, for once, as well as character development. Which isn't to say there are no battles, especially at the end of the novel, and those battles are written with Forstchen's usual excellence. And I must say that, despite the problems, I really am left wanting to know what happens next; this is not a complete story of the war, not by a long shot. Still, if the author had only put in a little more effort, thought things out a little more, this could have been so much better.
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