Friday, June 10, 2011

KCR: Torch of Freedom (scifi, novel)

Torch of Freedom is a novel set in the "Honorverse", i.e. the world of "Honor Harrington" series by David Weber. This book only peripherally involved Honor Harrington herself, but rather concentrated on the characters Anton Zilwicki and Victor Cachat, and Queen Berry of Torch.

To describe the novel would be rather difficult, as the Honorverse, with a dozen novels and several short story anthologies, is almost huge beyond description, but here's a tiny summary, just to set the stage:

The planet "Torch" was a slave planet held by "Mesa Corporation", which manufacturers genetic slaves. In a previous book, a slave revolt, with a little help from the outside, threw off Mesa, and with some outside help, the ex-slaves kept their freedom. The ex-slaves elected Berry, adopted daughter of Anton Zilwicki, to be their queen (yes, I know it sounds weird), because Zilwicki had a part in revolution, and Zilwicki's wife, Lady Montagne, was a Manticoran noblewoman who gave up her title to get a seat in House of Commons in order to fight for more help genetic slaves. When Queen Berry was almost assassinated, and similar strange assassinations were reported in other star systems as well, Anton Zilwicki (ex-Manticoran Navy Intelligence specialist), and Victor Cachat, his counterpart in the Haven Republic (both have a love for Torch), went off to look for clues on who may really be behind this...

The world is rich, and characters varied, but each is unique. You may have problem keeping the characters straight, but David Weber's novel reads like Tom Clancy writing science fiction, with a dash of Horatio Hornblower's derring-do.

My main problem with Weber is sometimes his characters goes into lecture mode, as the two characters have to say out loud every thought where they explain all the angles verbally, even when the two are like-minded. That's more of a nitpick though, not a fault.

If you read any of Honorverse novels, you should pick this one up.



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