Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great if you haven't read "Path of the Fury", 5 May 2006
I am an avid fan of David Weber since reading his Honor Harrington series and his Horse Stealer fantasy series. Since those early days I read everything else too and he is rarely off top form. I am not going to repeat the synopsis because you can read what's above, but I think it's worth reading my comments below.
I adored this smart, competent, tough, young, feisty, female protagonist, Alicia, originally created in the novel Path of the Fury (POTF), and I was highly excited by the idea of a prequel. NEW readers of Alicia will love this book as it's wonderfully crafted, humorous, realistic and empathic characterisation and is fantastically plotted. However, readers of POTF might not be so delighted, hence 4 stars not 5.
The problem is that while I LOVED finding out the early days of the "larva" turning into a "wasp" (military terms used in the book), BUT I became quickly frustrated as Weber seemed to "tease" us with quick glimpses of parts of her early life, which I wanted to explore more of, but he'd quickly then race on months later or into the next major section of her life without regard for the transition bit... I know it keeps the story moving, but it just seemed a bit clumsy and jarring as Weber is usually so smooth at creating a sense of passing of time that it seems natural. I just don't feel that we've really scratched beyond the surface of this character by this backtracking. Not that Weber's prose was bad by any means, it just that when Weber had backtracked before in the Honorverse, his short stories provided more details and his novels don't keep skipping over so much time between chapters.
I guess I wish Weber had made more of the prequel. Perhaps releasing them as a series of short stories, rather than pushing it as part of a re-launch of a book. Some of the new parts of the book seem like small novellas gravitated together by poor cohesion strategies, which is uncharacteristic of my favourite author. I love this character almost as much as Honor and I was just disappointed not more was made of her as the Honorverse. Write more about Alicia please David, you haven't nearly satisfied me!
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Prequel + Path of the Fury, 9 Mar 2006
After reading another review here that said that "In Fury Born" is actually a reprint of "Path of the Fury" I contacted Baen Books and asked if it was true. Arnold Bailey from Baen replied in an email that "It's a prequel that includes Path of the Fury." As I thoroughly enjoyed "Path of the Fury" and actually managed to trash it when we had a water leak, I've now added this to my list of "Must Have!".
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Modern Heinlein?, 11 Jul 2007
Just finished `Path of Fury' so I thought I'd put a review here as well, particularly as `In Fury Born' is a reprint with some bits added. This is the same a my review under `Path of Fury'. I've read R. A. Heinlein since I was a boy in the fifties and I continue to re-read all his works. This book is almost, almost, Heinlein at his best (with a touch of Doc Smith) - and that in my view is as high a complement as I can give. It was appropriate, I thought, that my copy of Path of Fury had a flyer for Robert A Heinlein's works as an end paper because this book has it's roots fairly and squarely in two of Heinlein's greatest works.
It's clear that David Weber is also a Heinlein fan. The Cadre are clearly trooper derivatives from `Starship Troopers' (the book not the dismal film version) and that Megarea is a combination of Mike from `The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' and the lightship AI from the later stories.
The author has taken these concepts and thrown in an element of Greek Mythology, the Fury Tisiphone, and come up with a fantastically exciting, interesting, and surprisingly moving story - and a fantastic heroine.
I know the this story has been republished (above) with some expansion of aspects of the heroine and, like other reviewers, I do hope that David Weber can see fit to `re-activate' Alicia Devries for future commissions for she is a powerful, enticing, and electric heroine - as are Tisiphone and Megarea!
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