|
|
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spoiled brat meets reality, Dec 3 2003
Prince Roger McClintock is a embarrassment. Everyone in his regal family is either too busy to deal with him, or has a bigoted reaction to his close resemblance to his disloyal father. Not even his mother, the Empress Regnant, can break through her instinctive emotional response to engage her son as a human being, treating him as a potential traitor and security risk before she treats him as her child. Instead, she shuffles her responsibilities in regard to Roger off onto flunkies and servants. Predictably enough, Roger grows up spoiled, self-indulgent, and reckless. Factions at Court try to manipulate the young prince, with varied success, further fueling suspicions as to his loyalty and stability. Fortunately for the Empire, while the Empress has a dangerous blind spot bordering on gross dereliction of her Imperial Duty when it comes to her youngest child, she has the sense to employ top-flight servants and flunkies, and to keep her military bodyguards free of court politics. This fact will become critically important not only to herself and her son, but her empire as a whole.Roger is sent packing, over his immature objections, on a state visit to participate in a boring and unpleasant, but politically necessary ceremony on an unpleasant and distant world. Along with him are bundled his immediate staff, and a contingent of his long-suffering and generally contemptuous bodyguard. Along the way, the military transport in which the prince is traveling is sabotaged and critically damaged by a pre-programmed 'zombie' traitor, and the ship is left limping towards the only star system within reach. Things go from bad to worse as they stumble upon a force of hostile warships sneaking about in Imperial territory and clearly up to no good. Convinced that the only habitable planet, Marduk, has been compromised, and determined to prevent the capture of a member of the Family Royal by the fanatical and generally unprincipled foe, Prince Roger is bundled off in a shuttle force with as many of his bodyguard as will fit, again over his immature objections. Meanwhile, as the shuttle force makes its way to a covert planet-fall, the crippled transport makes a stand against the opposing force, managing to destroy the last of them by a suicidal ruse. Landing on the far side of a large planet from the only human base, facing a hostile terrain and climate, Prince Roger's force must figure a way to march clear around the globe and assault the enemy troops holding that base, with only a long company of 'lightly' equipped Marine-bodyguards. Further worsening matters is the facts that they must make their way on foot, and they have roughly six months in which to make this epic journey, because the flora and fauna of Marduk are markedly lacking in certain critical human dietary requirements, and there are only enough nutritional supplements to last the assembled force half a year. It's "Get to the base, or starve trying." Soon after the March Upcountry begins, the prince begins to show some signs of unsuspected depth. His self-indulgent field trips and risk-taking pleasures have been dismissed as the pursuits of a spoiled playboy, but they have left the prince a talented athlete, and a skilled hunter along the lines of the adventurous European aristocracy of the eighteenth century. Prince Roger is as crack a shot as any "great white hunter" of that era, and as physically competent as any extreme athlete. In addition, he's benefitted from the genetic and cybernetic tinkering that all Imperial family members receive, making him surprisingly competent in the primitive conditions he finds himself. His bodyguard are bemused to find their contemptible object of duty displaying advanced skills they never knew he possessed. The bodyguard company is a surprise to it's own members, too, as they begin to discover that while each member was selected for military competence, they were also selected for diversity of other skills, too. The jungle is full of seriously dangerous life, the hostile climate causes breaks-down in their gear, native politics and cultures complicate their planning, and raiding natives displaced by larger, more aggressive tribes threaten their lives. Never-the-less, the assembled company move off through the lethal jungles of Marduk, on their mission to Get The Prince Home, even as they learn startling things about each other and their prince. Death and blood will follow their trail, but they've got a mission, and they're not about to fail. The technology of March Upcountry is interesting, fully developed, and well thought-through. Technical aspects are glossed over, where the workings of the equipment is too close to 'magical', and this is a good thing. While the technology is required to make the story work, Weber avoids trying to explain things he can't explain, and doesn't tempt us to inquire by adding too much detail. Instead, he supplies a few essential tid-bits for verisimilitude, and then asks us to believe the rest. OK, fair enough: I'll believe it works. This is an area where other S-F writers would do very well to copy him. The politics of the court are also left vague, with just enough detail to show the court as a real snake pit, without creating plot holes with excess detail. Again, this is effective and I like it. In other books, I've observed authors sinking themselves into inescapable traps by trying to document parts of the story that do their skills no credit. Weber avoids this, and moves on with his story. Bravo! The characters are multi-facetted, and show personal development. This is too rare in military/adventure S-F, and for that alone, I would recommend this book. I detect some elements of Xenophon and his Ten-Thousand in this story, which is a bit of history I would strongly recommend to any person interested in military S-F, as I would also recommend the exploits of the historical Belisarius. Overall, this is as good as it gets within the genre today, and I unreservedly recommend this book as a top-flight read.
|
