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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Hell’s Gate/Hell Hath No Fury
(David Weber, Linda Evans)
Let me start by making an observation; a universe needs to be built up gradually. David Weber’s masterful Honor Harrington series started with three books that were effectively stand-alone, and Honor was the star. That other characters floated into view – and we had glances into the internal workings of Manticore – mattered little; it was Honor and her exploits that gave the universe meaning. Building on that, Weber was able to add more and more depth to the universe, first with a book largly focused around the internal workings of Manticore, and then with books that took Honor out of that region, to Grayson, to Slilisa, and finally into the heart of the bad guys. At the same time, the background was growing. Characters like White Haven (cheers), Oscar Saint-Just (boo), Thisman (Umm…not sure) and others became important – and it WORKED! The true success of Echoes of Honor can be measured by the fact that the not-Honor characters held half the book and it worked. The final three books in the mainstream sequence were vast – and they worked. Some fans complained that they spent too much time away from Honor, but…the universe could carry it. And it did. Hell’s Gate reads very much like an attempt to do the final three Honor books without the years of hard work involved in building the universe. The first part of the book is awesomely detailed, confusing the poor reader. I nearly deleted the ARC twice; only my love for the other works of David Weber kept me going. It has its moments, but it really needed an editor. Hell’s Gate and its sequel revolve around contact between two universes, spreading through natural formations of portals between worlds identical to Earth – Alternate History fans will consider them something akin to Stirling’s Gate in Conqisitor. The catch is that one universe is based on science – roughly around 1880’s level – and the other is based on magic; they have magic weapons, mages and so forth. To add to the confusion, the science-based guys have some pisonic talents. The book REALLY needed a glossary and background appendix; the tiny glossary at the back of HHNF isn’t anything like detailed enough for what the reader needs to know. To sum up the plot in several lines – the two universes blunder into each other when they stumble across a world with several large Gates – called ‘Hell’s Gate.’ First Contact comes in the form of an accidental clash between the two sides, then a long pursuit of a survey team (one of the clunkier parts of the book – information about the family of one of the team members and what they do isn’t needed in the middle of a shooting match) and finally all-out war. Powerful factions on both sides are stirring the pot – one of Weber’s occasional problems is that he often has incompetent officers in positions where they can mess things up – and both sides (they seem to be almost mirroring each other) crash headlong into war. Quite frankly, the two books between them make a story; neither of them really stands on its own. (Particularly jarring is the treatment of an officer who is a coward – true – but also right.) The books do have their moments. I am not a fan of science-v-magic books, often because its impossible to have ‘magic’ without either a random element or a ‘magic-science’, al la Into The Darkness. The authors do attempt to suggest that the reasons for the different evolutions will be revealed later. Despite all that, however, the first book reads very much like a prequel…to books that have never been written. The politics, the science…all of it means nothing to readers who know no background for the universe. While we can talk of what it means when North Hollow has an eternal enmity to our heroine, we know why; we know nothing of the history of either world, save what is revealed to us in the books themselves. Baen Books is much better at pairing older writers with newer writers than most publishers. The Weber/Ringo, Ringo/Kratman and Ringo/Taylor collaborations have been very good. However, Hell’s Gate suffers badly from the lack of tight editing in the right places; buy paperback.
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