Books in this series (all published by Baen):

1. An Oblique Approach (1998)
2. In the Heart of Darkness (1998)
3. Destiny’s Shield (1999)
4. Fortune’s Stroke (2000)
5. The Tide of Victory (2001)
6. The Dance of Time (2006)

The premise sounds a little silly: a cyborg and a crystalline artificial intelligence travel back through time from the far future into the Sixth Century. The cyborg’s mission: to create a totalitarian world government that will create the perfect future according to one branch of fanatics. The crystal’s mission: to aid the Byzantine general Belisarius to defeat the cyborg.

Never mind that premise. Here is another. Gunpowder and associated technologies are introduced in the 6th Century, first in India and second in the (Eastern) Roman Empire. What happens next?

Based on an outline for a trilogy by David Drake, Eric Flint has created a masterpiece in this six-volume story. It really is a united story, not a collection of six independent novels; the story starts in the first book and ends in the sixth. There will be no more books in this series (except, perhaps, as a “sequel” series, though the authors have not hinted about this).

It is a masterpiece, all right. In an action-adventure story, plot is paramount, and the Belisarius hexalogy has an unusually tight plot for the word count. The characters are well drawn; evidence of this claim is that I wept, much like Belisarius himself, when one of the significant secondary characters died – in battle, yes, but by a fortune’s stroke and not by any enemy’s design. The characterization of the societies and countries involved is suberb in my admittedly history-challenged opinion; India is described vividly, although, as Flint has mentioned, it’s extremely anachronistic (Flint himself considers this appropriate under the circumstances, and describes his portrait of 6th Century India as “impressionistic”).

After a slightly slow start – it takes several not so exciting chapters for the premise of the story to be revealed – the story starts climbing like an aeroplane after takeoff, and never stops. The mood in the beginning is downright depressing, with only a tiny bit of hope, but it steadily brightens, and the last book is pure payoff, immensely satisfying to this reader. It was so satisfying, that I haven’t suffered from story world withdrawal after finishing The Dance of Time. This is unusual.

I have no other option but to rate this story 5/5.

Somehow John Ringo‘s latest, Princess of Wands, reminds me of another book he’s written recently. Both have the overtones of some sort of literary self-congratulation. In Ghost‘s case, I counted that as a fault. In Princess of Wands‘ case, I count it as a strength. Both books are also episodic rather than regular novels, but the similarities end here.

One problem in reviewing this book is that one cannot really discuss much of the setup without writing major spoilers. The cover blurb takes one approach: describe what the reader learns within the first five pages, who cares that the picture that gives one of the book is completely wrong. Unfortunately, the cover blurb is so misleading that it can make people ignore this book even though they should have picked it up.

The genre is urban fantasy. The main character is a devout Christian soccer mom who finds herself in an adventure. The magic system and the ontology are quite interesting. There are battles with evil. There is a con. The publishing house itself, Pier… erm… Baen Books, as well as some of its authors, make an appearance onstage. (In fact, if you aren’t a barfly, you’re going to miss some of the fun – like I probably missed a lot of it, never having visited a con where Baen people gather.)

I found it a satisfying read, especially the middle episode. The final episode was so short that it didn’t feel well balanced, but it’s a minor issue. However, I would probably hesitate to recommend this book to a certain kind of Christans: if you think Harry Potter is evil, don’t come near this book.

Overall, I’ll rate this book 4/5.

John Ringo is known for writing military science fiction. I therefore was a little surprised to find out about Ghost, which, according to what I knew at the time, is a James Bond story, set roughly in the real world. Well, I’ve always liked “special agent” stories, so I read this book.

First impressions: Interesting stories; it was more a collection of connected novellas than a novel. Certainly not for everyone: there is a lot of explicit BDSM (read: very rough but consensual sex) and even an explicit aggravated rape scene. Single agent overpowering multiple terrorists. Nuclear explosions (I’ve said it before, a book which depicts a nuclear explosion, cannot be all bad). More than one miracle recovery. A protagonist who certainly is not a good person. An overall first impression was of a former military guy writing out a fantasy, sort of literary self-satisfaction. I didn’t think much good of this book at that time.

I later found out that this book was intended to start a new series. Now, I had actually heard of a follow-up book, but I had figured it was more of the same, and I wasn’t interested. Instead, the tone shifts a lot. The Ghost becomes a significant part of the main character’s backstory, but that’s all that it is: backstory. I have now read a part of the sequel, and it has changed my prespective on Ghost.

As a standalone book, Ghost is a horrible book, and I would not recommend it, because the brutality in it has no meaning. But as the prequel to a different series, it gets meaning; it becomes a sort of character study of a man who has vicious demons inside him and is barely able to control them, and channel them for doing good (and once loses control of them).

So, Mike Harmon is an ex-SEAL, discharged on medical grounds, who is a conservative jerk according to his fellow history undergrads. He likes to stalk young coeds, and one day, as he is doing so, he accidentally witnesses a kidnapping. He follows, and discovers a terrorist plot. He kills the bad guys (most of them, anyway), and follows up on the trail of other, already kidnapped women. He hitches a ride on a plane and ends up … well, I don’t want to spoil it for you.

I’ll rate this book 8/10, with the warning that the book contains explicit descriptions of extreme sex and even rape, in addition to the usual jamesbondesque explosions and stuff.

There’s a reason why I’m going through Baen’s pile of published books. He is the only publisher I know who gets ebooks, I mean really gets them. (Virtually?) all of his catalogue is available in ebook form – with no Digital Restrictions Management! – for a reasonable price, and quite a few are available for free in the Baen Free Library. You can read these books on the browser, or download them to your PDA, whatever works for you. Naturally, you can always buy a dead-tree version, instead. I figure, this publisher is worth the money I pour at him, and hence I pour it in quantity. This is my explanation for having expended six euros for the following ebook.

Cally’s War by John Ringo and Julie Cochrane is a sequel to a four-book trilogy by the first author. The trilogy is heavy-duty military science fiction, telling an excellent version of the “aliens invade Earth” story. Cally’s War is set forty years later, and features a minor supporting character from the trilogy as the main character. By the start of the book, Cally is an assassin working for a secret society which wages a secret war against the galactic domination of the Darhel species.

The plot of the book revolves around the threat of the secret society being exposed to the opposition, and Cally’s mission in this book is basic counterintelligence: find out the mole and destroy it. However, it would be wrong to think that this book tells an espionage story, or that the counterintelligence plot is integral to the book: the plot is weak, mainly serving as a thin connector between episodes involving Cally’s personal life, or the lack of it, and her sex life (from whose lack she does not suffer).

This book, however, seems to suffer from the lack of an editor. There are good ideas, and the storytelling is okay, but to make a really good book, the authors should have regarded this version as the first draft to be thrown away – and rewritten the book completely. There is really no unity in the story, and several good themes worthy of exploration are just skimmed.

It is obvious that Ringo did not contribute much prose to this book: the bad politics rants are conspicuosly absent. I think I would have enjoyed the book more had Ringo actually written more of the book, even if it meant suffering through new pro-Bush rhetorics.

I suppose this book could work standalone, that is, it does not depend on the reader having read the previous books. On the other hand, there is very little that speaks for reading this book at all, except that it continues the story started in the four-book trilogy. I appreciated the story as a continuation of Cally’s arc, and some of the sex scenes were fun to read, but otherwise it left me wanting.

I rate this book 4/10.