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Torch of Freedom.
Weber, David and Eric Flint. Torch of Freedom. Riverdale, NY: Baen Books, 2009.
I wanted to like this book so much less than I did. In point of fact, it's the most sheer fun I've had in the Honorverse since…I don't know when; maybe not since The Short Victorious War (though I think the Saganami books are also pretty enjoyable). It's also an interesting mixture of frustrating tropes combined with some surprisingly thorough thinking on (among other things) slavery as an institution and human nature.
This is the most recent book in the Honorverse, which is at 14 books and counting, but I have made every effort not to discuss anything which isn't generally comprehensible from the backs of the books.
Torch of Freedom picks up after the previous book in this branch of the 'verse, Crown of Slaves, left off; Berry Zilwicki has been installed as Queen of the renamed Torch system, which in the previous book wrested its freedom from its slaverowner overlords of the Manpower Corporation. Manpower and its home system, Mesa, are the premier fleshdealers in the genetic slave trade, which is one of the bugaboos of the human diaspora in the forty-first century CE. ToF interweaves with the more recent mainstem books, as well as the Saganami books (particularly Storm from the Shadows), but it can unequivocally be enjoyed on its own, and the book is enjoyable. Eric Flint brings the humor and prunes back the infodumps, and somehow a coherent, well-paced plot involving characters with whom we actually spend enough time to care about! It's a refreshing change from books like War of Honor or At All Costs, and I think Weber's decision to split the storyline into three major prongs, advancing concurrently, is a good one.
And like I said, despite its being pleasurable the book is also thought-provoking. The forty-first century is not some utopian paradise; prejudice abounds, particularly prejudice against genetic slaves, (and don't even get me started on attitudes towards homosexuality!), but the authors do a good job of being evenhanded; even the people who are utterly repugnant are fully realized human beings. I suspect some people will find that one of the major plotlines of the book, involving the awakening to conscience of a certain highly placed Mesan officer, overly familiar, but it's handled well. Also, there's humor! Actual running narratival gags! I'm still impressed by this. Also, unlike the last time there's no angsting about BDSM. Also in this book Web du Havel, whom I think we're supposed to like but whom I can't stand, was much less present, though he and Jeremy X, abolitionist terrorist turned cabinet minister, get the two best lines:
In At All Costs we saw two of this story-prong's main characters, superspies Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat (they're both so OTT and awesome), head off on a secret mission to Mesa, and we get to see the contents of that mission in this book; Mesan society is an interesting morass of contradictions, as well as a place in which blood-curdling eugenics procedures are the norm, which becomes an important plot point. But given the dates strewn liberally at the top of each chapter (hooray for dates! now can we please have a map?), I'm not sure the mission (which ends in November 1921, PD) takes place in time to affect the outcome of Operation Dragon's Teeth, which is scheduled for around Christmas, 1921. ARGH.
It took me a while to get around to reading this book, actually, because given the jacket description I was convinced, in retrospect stupidly, that the bodyguard from Beowulf with whom Queen Berry falls in love would be a woman, and I was incredibly disappointed when I flipped to the end of the book before starting (as I do), and saw that wasn't the case. For the past 14 books the Beowulfans have been set up as the standard of sexual mores which the rest of the galaxy considers outré, and given attitudes towards homosexuality displayed by most characters (namely, it's rather risqué), I was sure that on Beowulf literally anything--bi, gay, poly, het, trans, you name it--goes. Instead, and I quote,
Actually, in this book there is one character--offscreen, mind you--who is unequivocally gay. He's also interested in women's clothing. Head, meet wall.
So, there's that. Also, Weber and Flint are convinced that "the pyramids were built with slave labor", which is an assumption that's been contested for a long time now, long enough that I read about it in National Geographic back when I still read the magazine, which would be at least five years ago. History FAIL.
The other thing that's remarkable about this book, and which I'm not sure how to interpret, is the deep discourse about sanity running through it. Victor Cachat, who is perfectly sane, routinely is called a psychopath, even by his friends, and the entire complement of the Mesan Alignment, which has schemed for six centuries to impose a Khan Noonien Singh-style social program on the galaxy at large, at the knowing costs of billions of human lives, is repeatedly described as insane--all too rational, of course, but fundamentally insane. The same goes, though not as blatantly, for the officers of the People's Navy in Exile, who have committed themselves to restoring the People's Republic of Haven, which was a bloody dictatorship. Given the long history of the category slippage involved in who is labeled "insane" in our society (including people of color and women who wanted rights white men weren't prepared to give them--to take one example, suffragettes on both sides of the Atlantic were placed in mental institutions), I'm wary of all this rhetoric, though I do think the authors' judgments here are fundamentally sound; the PNE and the Alignment are a bunch of fucking fanatics for whom genocide is the least thing they'll do to accomplish their goals, and what proves their insanity is that they're convinced they're right, knowing what the rest of the galaxy thinks of them; as one Mesan realizes, contemplating the PRE, it's their very madness that empowers them. And given Mesa's demonstrated capabilities, and those that haven't even been demonstrated openly yet--what is the streak drive, OMG?!--this does spell an exceedingly rough ride for the good guys in future books.
So, all in all, a guilty pleasure, but a guilty pleasure in which my faith has been partially restored. And if you're interested, you can download full-text HTML versions of the first 14 books here; they're off the Torch of Freedom CD bound into the book, which is free to share for free. I've numbered the main novels according to internal chronology; the remainder of the books are the short story collections, which generally fill in interesting gaps in the narrative.
I wanted to like this book so much less than I did. In point of fact, it's the most sheer fun I've had in the Honorverse since…I don't know when; maybe not since The Short Victorious War (though I think the Saganami books are also pretty enjoyable). It's also an interesting mixture of frustrating tropes combined with some surprisingly thorough thinking on (among other things) slavery as an institution and human nature.
This is the most recent book in the Honorverse, which is at 14 books and counting, but I have made every effort not to discuss anything which isn't generally comprehensible from the backs of the books.
Torch of Freedom picks up after the previous book in this branch of the 'verse, Crown of Slaves, left off; Berry Zilwicki has been installed as Queen of the renamed Torch system, which in the previous book wrested its freedom from its slaverowner overlords of the Manpower Corporation. Manpower and its home system, Mesa, are the premier fleshdealers in the genetic slave trade, which is one of the bugaboos of the human diaspora in the forty-first century CE. ToF interweaves with the more recent mainstem books, as well as the Saganami books (particularly Storm from the Shadows), but it can unequivocally be enjoyed on its own, and the book is enjoyable. Eric Flint brings the humor and prunes back the infodumps, and somehow a coherent, well-paced plot involving characters with whom we actually spend enough time to care about! It's a refreshing change from books like War of Honor or At All Costs, and I think Weber's decision to split the storyline into three major prongs, advancing concurrently, is a good one.
And like I said, despite its being pleasurable the book is also thought-provoking. The forty-first century is not some utopian paradise; prejudice abounds, particularly prejudice against genetic slaves, (and don't even get me started on attitudes towards homosexuality!), but the authors do a good job of being evenhanded; even the people who are utterly repugnant are fully realized human beings. I suspect some people will find that one of the major plotlines of the book, involving the awakening to conscience of a certain highly placed Mesan officer, overly familiar, but it's handled well. Also, there's humor! Actual running narratival gags! I'm still impressed by this. Also, unlike the last time there's no angsting about BDSM. Also in this book Web du Havel, whom I think we're supposed to like but whom I can't stand, was much less present, though he and Jeremy X, abolitionist terrorist turned cabinet minister, get the two best lines:
Du Havel leaned forward, planted his hands on the table, puffed out his cheeks, and then blew out the air. "Well, I will be damned."Between the endings of Storm from the Shadows and At All Costs, things were looking pretty bleak for our heroes on both sides of the Havenite-Manticore war, but ToF gives me hope that things may actually not be quite so bad. Most importantly (as this quotation shows), key people have begun putting together the fact that the genetic slavers of Mesa are far, fare more than the cheerfully amoral corporate slavetraders they've presented themselves as for centuries, and given Mesa's plans for Manticore and then for the rest of the galaxy, this is enormously important. There's also enough information about where the Torch wormhole actually goes to put me on tenterhooks for the next books.
"We may all be," said Jeremy.
In At All Costs we saw two of this story-prong's main characters, superspies Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat (they're both so OTT and awesome), head off on a secret mission to Mesa, and we get to see the contents of that mission in this book; Mesan society is an interesting morass of contradictions, as well as a place in which blood-curdling eugenics procedures are the norm, which becomes an important plot point. But given the dates strewn liberally at the top of each chapter (hooray for dates! now can we please have a map?), I'm not sure the mission (which ends in November 1921, PD) takes place in time to affect the outcome of Operation Dragon's Teeth, which is scheduled for around Christmas, 1921. ARGH.
It took me a while to get around to reading this book, actually, because given the jacket description I was convinced, in retrospect stupidly, that the bodyguard from Beowulf with whom Queen Berry falls in love would be a woman, and I was incredibly disappointed when I flipped to the end of the book before starting (as I do), and saw that wasn't the case. For the past 14 books the Beowulfans have been set up as the standard of sexual mores which the rest of the galaxy considers outré, and given attitudes towards homosexuality displayed by most characters (namely, it's rather risqué), I was sure that on Beowulf literally anything--bi, gay, poly, het, trans, you name it--goes. Instead, and I quote,
And, in fact, probably only people raised in Beowulf's unusually relaxed mores could have handled it without disciplinary problems. For Beowulfers, sex was a perfectly natural human activity, no more remarkable in itself than eating.AHAHHAHA THAT'S IT?!?! WHERE IS A WALL SO I CAN BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST IT!?!?!
Actually, in this book there is one character--offscreen, mind you--who is unequivocally gay. He's also interested in women's clothing. Head, meet wall.
So, there's that. Also, Weber and Flint are convinced that "the pyramids were built with slave labor", which is an assumption that's been contested for a long time now, long enough that I read about it in National Geographic back when I still read the magazine, which would be at least five years ago. History FAIL.
The other thing that's remarkable about this book, and which I'm not sure how to interpret, is the deep discourse about sanity running through it. Victor Cachat, who is perfectly sane, routinely is called a psychopath, even by his friends, and the entire complement of the Mesan Alignment, which has schemed for six centuries to impose a Khan Noonien Singh-style social program on the galaxy at large, at the knowing costs of billions of human lives, is repeatedly described as insane--all too rational, of course, but fundamentally insane. The same goes, though not as blatantly, for the officers of the People's Navy in Exile, who have committed themselves to restoring the People's Republic of Haven, which was a bloody dictatorship. Given the long history of the category slippage involved in who is labeled "insane" in our society (including people of color and women who wanted rights white men weren't prepared to give them--to take one example, suffragettes on both sides of the Atlantic were placed in mental institutions), I'm wary of all this rhetoric, though I do think the authors' judgments here are fundamentally sound; the PNE and the Alignment are a bunch of fucking fanatics for whom genocide is the least thing they'll do to accomplish their goals, and what proves their insanity is that they're convinced they're right, knowing what the rest of the galaxy thinks of them; as one Mesan realizes, contemplating the PRE, it's their very madness that empowers them. And given Mesa's demonstrated capabilities, and those that haven't even been demonstrated openly yet--what is the streak drive, OMG?!--this does spell an exceedingly rough ride for the good guys in future books.
So, all in all, a guilty pleasure, but a guilty pleasure in which my faith has been partially restored. And if you're interested, you can download full-text HTML versions of the first 14 books here; they're off the Torch of Freedom CD bound into the book, which is free to share for free. I've numbered the main novels according to internal chronology; the remainder of the books are the short story collections, which generally fill in interesting gaps in the narrative.