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March upcountry and march to the Sea 

I rarely read novels with more than one author. I think collaborating is cheating a little bit, and I always wonder why the hell authors are so lazy that they need to write a novel with someone else. It strikes me as odiously commercial, if you have two authors working on a novel, you can write it for half the work and in half the time and the publisher can make a couple bucks even if the novel sucks. 

Nonetheless, having nothing else to read, I read the two books March Upcountry and March to the Sea by both John Ringo and David Weber. If two authors work on a book, I figure its ok to review the first two books in the series at the same time. 

The series, which has four books to date is an homage to the Edgar Rice Burros style of adventure novels. A spoiled prince, on his way to perform routine diplomatic service crash lands on a planet full of primitive aliens. Luckily, he’s not alone. His royal bodyguard, consisting of somewhere between fifty and seventy marines, is with him. There’s a spaceport across the planet from where the crash landing occurred, and the marines are trying to get the prince to the port so that they can try and steal a ship and get back to Earth. 

I’m divided as hell about these books. They suffer from a lot of problems, and work more as novels of idea’s then they do as fast paced adventure novels, which is ironic, because they are supposed to be fast paced adventure novels, but rapid pacing is the exact opisit of what they actually are. 

These novels drag with a capital D. 

The main plot device, repeated over and over again is that, while trying to get to this spaceport, the marines and the prince influence the primitive alien societies around them. Sometimes they overthrow governments, sometimes they trade technology for safe passage, and all of this is explained in thorough detail. 

A battle that lasts a day in the world of the book can drag on for a hundred pages, and instead of being described in snapshots of blood and gore, its more commonly shown by long conversations of the commanding officers. The series is really more of a hypothetical argument than a novel. “If futuristic marines were dropped on a primitive planet, what would happen.” 

And that question is answered exhaustively. Each society encountered is altered in some way, and discussions of the alterations and the implications, ethical, economic and political, are also discussed at length. 

The other problem is that characters are never really developed well. They aren’t exactly one dimensional, but the character development that does happen is not exactly subtle. The spoiled prince is gossiped about by other characters, with several theories tossed around for why he is why he is, which doesn’t matter for long because he doesn’t stay a spoiled prince for long. This is the type of book where people get better under stress, not worse. So soon the prince is self sacrificing and friendly, a war leader. Now, this isn’t the main problem, because while its not subtle, its not ham handed enough to be too awkward or unbelievable. The real problem is the marines. There are between seventy or fifty or something, an din the first book all of them it seems have several pages of narration which doesn’t matter because most are interchangeable. 

primitive aliens pop up like breeding rabbits, and also get there own viewpoint chapters. One alien tribal leader is much like another, just like most of the marines are interchangeable, so while the perspective is valuable, the actual character background really isn’t. 

Out of the maybe fifteen main characters of each book, three or four are unique enough to be interesting, the others only serve to fill out the exposition. 

I’m the type of guy who is moderately interested in this type of thing, and I finished these two books in about a week. They don’t grab your attention, but they can keep it, because despite the slow pacing, the idea’s the book examines are solidly dealt with, and as I say, are dealt with thoroughly. 

So whether you want to read these books really depends on why you want to pick up a novel. If you want a great story, don’t bother. The plot is an obvious set up to examine idea’s, and is mostly predictable. Example. Does the prince get with the cute female marine? Yes, obviously. If you want truly compelling characters, don’t bother. The characters with the most screen time are developed adequately, but the others are card bored cutouts of the worst kind. But if you want to read a novel that concerns itself with ideas, and not literary ideas but practical ideas, or really, not practical idea’s taken seriously, then read this. discussion of military tactics abound and the solutions to problems are dealt with realistically, even though the situation is obviously fantastic. If your into military history, or emerging technology, or kind of overblown adventure novels, give this series a try. If not, definitely don’t. 

The main strength of this series is how it goes about showing the practical problems of most adventure novels. The main theme is that humanity as a species kicks ass, because we have the technology and morality to uplift lesser species, which I suppose could be read as an allegory for America verses the third world, but I didn’t bother to take the books that seriously. 

can’t give this one a rating, its too subjective.