Lt. Leary, Commanding

With the Lightnings: 2

ISBN: 0-671-57875-8 Order from: Amazon.com

A mildly entertaining space opera with slightly unusual but overly competent protagonists, with pastiche-like historical parallels.

Reviewed by David on October 07, 2000

Genre: Science Fiction (Military, Naval Adventure, War)

Synopsis: In this second part of a series of naval adventures in space, Cinnabar navy lieutenant Daniel Leary, and his friend, the unusually deadly librarian Adele Mundy take place in the lukewarm wars that the rather imperial republic participates. Struggling with tangled political alliances, barely domesticated pirates, as well as rumors of ghostly aliens, the hedonistic but very competent Leary, and partly sociopathic Mundy uphold their country's interest.

Full Review: This book joins a recently popular subgenre of naval space combat, which usually transposes the style, and occasionally settings and characters of 17th and early 18th century sailing naval adventures. Similar to the entertaining series by Weber (Echoes of Honor and others), this one goes to sometimes amusing lengths to recreate the style of the sailing navy, including (in this case) masts, riggers, and some of the mores and speech patterns. While beginning to feel derivative, these books, when executed well, are still entertaining, especially to fans of the true classics of the genre, such as Hornblower: Beat to Quarters.

This book is done well. While the main characters appear improbably competent, with Leary being almost supernaturally sensitive to the hyperspace Matrix, and Mundy being able to hack through any computer security at will. Nevertheless, their foibles make them far from paragons (e.g. quite different from Honor Harrington), and the extreme capability is not out of place in a space opera. There are definite parallels both to the late Roman republic, and the pre-Napoleonic British Empire. The style is deliberately archaic at times, but on the whole quite pleasant. There are a number of amusing observations. For instance, during a tense policy discussion:

Adele paused to remove with as much delicacy as possible something that hasn't responded well to chewing.

The plot leaves a couple of line left hanging, presumably for a sequel. That, along with a certain lack of originality in the genre and plot, make this otherwise enjoyable adventure only slightly above average among modern science fiction novels.

Overall: 5.5; Plot: 5.5; Characters: 6; Style: 6; World-building: 6; Originality: 4;

ISBN: 0-671-57875-8 Order from: Amazon.com