C.D. Covington

When the Tide Rises, David Drake. 2008, Baen Books.

This is the sixth novel in Drake’s RCN series. I haven’t read any of the previous books, but that didn’t make much difference, as far as I can tell. Perhaps I missed some of the in-jokes or references, but that’s not a big deal. It stands well on its own.

In the introduction, Drake cites the memoirs of Lord Cochrane as his source/inspiration for these books. This is the same memoir that Patrick O’Brian used for his Aubrey/Maturin books, so they bear a lot of similarity.

Commander Daniel Leary is in the employ of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, and he’s assigned to a planet that’s declared independence from the Alliance, Cinnabar’s enemy. He makes a stop at Diamondia, a planet under siege by Alliance forces, to check in with the man in charge there and see what the most recent intel is.

Adele Mundy, Leary’s signals officer and librarian-hacker-spy, meets a young man who’s the grandson of her mentor. His parents have just been killed by the head of the Alliance, and he wants her help. She brings him along on the trip, even though her sociopathic servant and bodyguard Tovera thinks it’s a bad idea.

Once they arrive at Bagaria, Leary is enjoined to the Bagarian fleet, and he commands them in a few raids in Alliance space. There are crosses and double-crosses, and politicking, and hardcore librarian spying.

There are a lot of details about the ships and sailing, and I will admit I skimmed them. I found it odd that starships had literal sailing masts and rigging, but it fit the book itself. I’m not sure what the sails were made of (probably described in more detail in earlier books in the series), though I remember mention of it being very thin. (Nanomaterial?) I will say that it’s disheartening to read about a ship with the name of your football club (which itself is named for a ship) being sunk a few hours before they’re set to take the pitch. (Sports fans are a superstitious lot. We won, btb, for the first time this season.)

There’s a lot of adventure, and I really liked the hardcore traumapast librarian. If you read the Aubrey/Maturin books (Master and Commander, etc) and thought, “You know what these books need? Spaceships,” the RCN series is for you. If you like Bujold’s Vorkosigan books and don’t mind fine attention to sailing detail, you might enjoy them, too.

The first three books are available at the Baen Free Library, beginning with With the Lightnings.

1632, by Eric Flint. 2000, Baen. Available in print and at the Baen Free Library

The premise behind 1632 and its sequels is that a mining town in West Virginia from the year 2000 is magically swapped with an equal-sized piece of land in Thuringia in 1632. The Americans are dropped in the middle of the Thirty Years’ War, during which the Catholic Holy Roman Empire was doing its level best to wipe out the Protestants.

Mike Stearns, a union organizer and UMWA member, organizes a militia to defend their town and the neighboring towns. Their personal gun collections are vastly superior to the arquebuses of the 17th century, so they have quick, decisive victories, until they get embroiled in the greater conflict surrounding them.

Flint goes into a good bit of detail about how the town residents can scale their existing level of technology–electricity, internal combustion engines, etc–down to something more sustainable with the resources available to them in the mid-17th century. He also goes into a good bit of detail about the military history and manouevres.

There’s a very strong “Wooo! USA!” jingoism to the book, but it’s a leftish sort of jingoism, focused on equality, freedom of religion, and worker’s rights. From someone of Flint’s background (former labor organizer and member of the Socialist Workers’ Party), that’s not too surprising.

There were several not-so-subtle digs at Americans, including remarks from 1632-era characters like “Americans don’t know how to cook without a ton of meat,” and “Why do they think walking everywhere is such a horrible thing?” which I found rather apt. He also takes a few digs at institutionalized sexism.

The best marksman in town is a high school senior named Julie. Before they got bamfed back to the 17th century, she was training for the Olympic biathlon qualification. She takes her shiny rifle and joins a party to act as a sniper. Mike tells her it’s OK if she can’t bring herself to shoot people, and that even in the military, they let you drop out of sniping without prejudice. She ignores him and sets up her targets.

Finally, an expression came to her young, almost angelic face. But Mike couldn’t quite interpret it. Sarcasm? No, it was more like whimsy; or maybe, wry amusement.

“Did Uncle Frank ever tell you the story,” she asked, “about the first time I went deer hunting? How I cried like a baby after I shot my first buck?”

Mike nodded. Julie’s expression grew very wry.

“You know why? The deer was so pretty. And it had never done me any harm.” Julie cocked her head toward her observer, a girl no older than she. Another recent high-school graduate. Slender, where Julie was not, but otherwise—peas from a pod.

“Hey, Karen! Those guys look pretty to you?”

Karen shifted her gum into a corner of her mouth. “Nope. Ugly bastards. Mean looking, too. Look more like wild dogs than cute little deer.”

Julie bared her teeth. The smile was far more savage than anything belonging on the face of an eighteen-year-old, male or female. “That’s what I thought. Hey, Karen! Watcha think they’ll do—to you and me, I mean—if they get their hands on us?”

Karen was back to chewing her gum. Her words came out in a semimumble. “Don’t want to think about it, girl. But I’ll tell you one thing. Won’t be trying to sweet-talk us into the backseat of a car. Not likely.”

The smile left Julie’s face; but, if anything, the sense of whimsy was even stronger in her eyes. She gave Mike a level gaze.

“That’s the whole problem with allowing men into combat,” she said solemnly. “You guys are just too emotional about the whole thing.”

Overall, I enjoyed the book, even though I had some quibbles with the German. (“Thank God” is three words in German, not two, and it’s not “Danke Gott,” but “Gott sei Dank.” Threw me out of the story both times it came up. This is not likely to be a problem for most readers, however.) There were some stylistic quirks that bothered me, but not enough to make me stop reading. If you like alternate history and military fiction, with some focus on the characters, you might like this. (And it’s available free online, so giving the first few chapters a go won’t cost you anything beyond your usual internet fee.)

Jump Gate Twist, Mark L. Van Name. Baen Books, 2010.

This omnibus collects the first two Jon & Lobo books, One Jump Ahead and Slanted Jack, and two short stories, “My Sister, My Self,” and “Lobo, Actually.” The author has written intros and afterwords for each section of the book, which reveal some insight into the writing of each tale.

One Jump Ahead starts with Jon attempting to take a vacation, but, thanks to a careless indiscretion, he’s hired to rescue a man’s daughter from her kidnappers. One of the local heads of a vast, interplanetary conglomerate is trying to get sole usage rights to the planet Jon’s vacationing on, and the other major vast, interplanetary conglomerate is angling for the same thing, so the daughter is kidnapped. Except Jon ends up entangled in a plot that is a lot more complicated than that, and he seeks the aid of his former employer, the Saw, a mercenary outfit.

In “My Sister, My Self,” Jon loses the person who means the most to him: his sister, Jennie. But not before she “fixes” him. The events in this story are referenced throughout the rest of Jon’s stories, and this gives us some insight into his life on Pinkelponker before he’s taken to Dump Island (see Children No More).

Slanted Jack is a con artist who used to be Jon’s partner in crime, and he waltzes into Jon’s life with a request to help this boy who’s a descendent of people from Pinkelponker. Of course it doesn’t turn out to be so easy, and Jon ends up tangling with arms smugglers, the colonial governing bodies, and the followers of a religion based on Pinkelponker, as well as Jack.

“Lobo, Actually,” is a Christmas story told by the AI of a Predator-Class Armored Vehicle: Jon’s ship, Lobo, but before he’s Jon’s ship. A young boy’s father is dying of an illness that’s going around their planet, because the hospitals don’t have the cure. Lobo feels something like pity for him, though it’s partly also boredom from being stuck in the town square as their pet scarecrow.

All together, the stories that comprise Jump Gate Twist are enjoyable. They’re full of action and adventure, with politics creeping up the side. Jon himself isn’t political, but the structural politics of the universe he inhabits are visible as he maneuvers through them. If you like adventure stories (in space!), pick up this book.