What Distant Deeps (RCN) [Mass Market Paperback]

This space opera is the most recent of, to date, eight naval SF action stories featuring Daniel Leary, an officer in the space navy of the far future "Republic of Cinnabar" and his signals officer (and super spy) Adele Mundy.

Like David Weber's "Honor Harrington" series, although with very different execution of a similar idea, this series imagines a far future technology for space travel and space warfare which imposes tactical, logistical and strategic challenges for space navy officers remarkably similar to those which the technology of fighting sail imposed on the wet navy officers of Nelson's navy. Including spaceships with sails.

And as the first 12 Honor Harrington novels are rather like a far future, gender reversed re-creation of C.S. Forester's Hornblower novels, Drake has confirmed that the "Leary" series was inspired by Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey and Maturin novels such as Master and Commander.

This book begins with a party on the Leary estate at Bantry as the Republic of Cinnabar and her longtime foes, the Alliance of "Free" Stars are finally at peace. The party includes a couple of delightfully written little vignettes which show how complicated the relationship between Daniel, his friend Adele Mundy, and his girlfriend Miranda Dorst has become. One of these includes the first occasion in the series when Adele's servant Tovera makes a joke which was a bit like the scenes in Star Trek TOS/Enterprise when Spock or T'Pol first make a joke.

Like the immediately preceding book, "When the Tide Rises," Daniel's mission in this one is to deliver an envoy, and is expected to be relatively straightforward.

The heavy cruiser "Milton" (formerly the "Scheer," which Leary and his crew captured from the Alliance during an earlier book, "The Way to Glory") has gone to the breakers yard after the damage she sustained at the end of "When the Tide Rises" when the previous diplomatic mission turned out to be anything but diplomatic. So Daniel, Adele and their crew are back in the "Cissie" - Daniel is given the job of taking Cinnabar's new diplomatic representative to Zenobia in the Qaboosh region, but in a chartered "Private Yacht" e.g. the former RCN Corvette "Princess Cecile" which Daniel himself now owns.

With the galaxy finally at peace, this should be an even easier mission than the Milton's diplomatic mission to the Veil had been supposed to be.

However, Cinnabar's own ally in the region, the ruler of Palmyra, has an agenda of her own, and this job too may prove more eventful than anyone expected ...

The series to date consists of:

1) With The Lightnings
2) Lt. Leary, Commanding
3) The Far Side of the Stars (Lt. Leary)
4) The Way To Glory (RCN)
5) Some Golden Harbor (RCN)
6) When the Tide Rises (R.C.N. - Lt. Leary)
7) In the Stormy Red Sky
8) This book: "What Distant Deeps"

The first few books were collectively known as the "Lt. Leary" series, but as he was promoted to Commander at the conclusion of "The Way to Glory" and to Captain at the start of "In the Stormy Red Sky" the series is now more aptly known as the "RCN" series.

The plots or situations of all the books in this series are to some extent inspired by real events from various periods of history, and David Drake usually explains in an author's note where he took them from. In the case of "What Distant Deeps" David Drake has taken the setting for the book from the problems created for the Roman Empire in the third century A.D. by their client state and proxy in the middle east, the Oasis of Palmyra, who had ideas of their own.

For a more recent illustration of the sort of problems which an out-of-control ally can create for a superpower, he argues that the Falklands War came about because the Galtieri Junta in Argentina assumed that their assistance to the USA in Nicaragua meant that America would protect them against a British response when they invaded the Falkland Islands.

As the cover art hints, this book also has a side plot involving a race of dragon-like creatures. Drake has given Daniel Leary the interest in biology which O'Brien's books assigned to Stephen Maturin, and he is fascinated to realise that these dragons are not native to the planet where the Cissies find them. The suggestion is that an alien space travelling race brought them there long before humanity had space travel. This side story is not pursued for long in this book, but perhaps it is laying the groundwork for a more important part of a future novel.

David Drake is a consistent four-star author: his enormous output doesn't include many five star books (though there are a few) but I've never read a bad one. The RCN stories are all clever, entertaining, and interesting and "What Distant Deeps" is no exception.

I only discovered Leary and co, only a few years ago and have enjoyed them (despite the less than PC language at times ). But this book, just doesn't hit the mark, and is lacking in well action and well decent plot. It feels more like filler, than a decent book in its own right. Has Drake run out of decent ideas for Leary? Three stars only, Drakes a decent enough writer and even a average story from him is enough to get me finish it. Not having the read the next book yet, I could say you could easily7 miss this, as as nothing really major happens (maybe I've been spoiled ) But come on Drake we expect more from the Cissies !! Up the RCN !!

Yet again Mr Drake has written an excellent yarn with leary and Mundy. with all the excellent historical underpinnings that lend the tales such verlimstude