ISBN: 0-671-87865-4 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com
New age Ninja crystal saves Roman-Christian Byzantium from fate worse than death.
Reviewed by Neil on May 04, 1998 (rev. 5)
Genre: Science Fiction (India, Historical)
Synopsis: This is a historical time travel science fiction novel set in the reign of the late Roman Emperor Justinian. A battle of evil future intelligences vs. good future intelligences erupts in ancient Byzantium. While evil chooses the ancient Malwa empire in India, where all the bad guys beat up women, make torture a religion, and have shockingly poor discipline, the good guys of political Byzantium get a crystal downloaded through time with bad reception and weak powers of persuasion. It's never easy, is it? The very competent general Belisarius, known for his theory of winning though avoiding direct battle, ends up fighting quite a few direct page turning battles as the agent of the forces that must defeat the evil Malwa. He must deceive his emperor Justinian, travel to India, befriend a colorful set of characters, and save the world, or in this first installment, at least rescue an Indian princess from a fate equivalent to death.
Full Review: I'm willing to give a lot of time to authors who write too much. They are prolific, I suspect, since they have to earn a living, which is a very ethical reason to write. Thus some latitude must be given to someone who loves writing enough to raise a family by quick scribing. Dostoevsky and Dickens and Trollop spewed out reams of installment based novels, and are a delight to read, if their novels are occasionally somewhat unconcentrated.
David Drake lately seems to have become rather too prolific, too thin even accepting a lower standard for the professional scribbler. With this book, in collaboration with Eric Flint, some new facets appear that must mean the collaboration has sparked some creative energy into a worn out genre. In particular, there is some good writing now and then, and some attempt to understand the philosophy of the time. Not much: most of the book is typical war gore and slave sex, with the heroes having taut swelling muscles, swords that never fail, and great leadership abilities. The women have taut muscles, know karate moves, are wiser than the men, and are open to sex. There is some light philosophy tossed in now and then to lend a glimmer of profundity, but it only influcences the dialog, not the action.
I'd rather that someone write such a alternate history novel with the seriousness of a great historical novel, where environment and ideas matter to the action and characters. I don't for a minute believe in the reality of Drake and Flint's Byzantium or Ninja princesses. However, the book can be enjoyed as slightly above average historical science fiction with sword battles and future time-crystals instead of magic and elves, and adequately peppered with the late twentieth centuries instances on sex scenes.
Personally, I'll take the magic and elves. It's not that their Byzantium is not believable. Belief is rarely the problem with such stories. The problem is that Drake and Flint have crated 1990 characters with attitudes and dropped them unchanged into Byzantium, and we learn nothing from then we can't get from a mediocre situation comedy on television. The book has few historical details, and many colorful characters, and the occasional bit of quite good writing. I did enjoy reading it, but I felt the setting could have been anytime and any place with insertable plot and characters, and would have preferred stronger universe that acted as a energising stage for its characters to act in.
Short Review: The choice of a relatively unexplored era, Byzantium, does not help propel this novel as much as it should; the authors seem eager to abandon exotic Byzantium and take their characters into more exotic war torn India and Africa. It's sort of like trading togas for elephants; elephants are bigger and make more noise, which suites the mood of this novel.
The novel needs more history and less adventure. It clearly intends to be the first of a series set in the era, with the exploits of the General Belisarius as its focus. Too often there is crude and unnecessary foreshadowing of the future, the sort of "little did Julius know that he would retire to the country and think back on the days when he cut of the enemy heads, reaping their lives like barley in the fall, as the best of his life" kind of thing. Its basic premise, that an "Oblique approach" is the best way to win a war, is not carried out in the story line. Instead super-hero colorful characters accompany the hero on his journey into the heart of Indian darkness to rescue a princess. With the exception of the Byzantium setting, this has been done better before, and rather too often, at that.
This is a pity. I have seen the ruins of Byzantium in far off Istanbul, and the mystery half hidden there emerges in the fragments of art far more strongly and profoundly than in the crystals of this book.
Overall: 6; Plot: 4; Characters: 6; Style: 6; World-building: 6; Originality: 4;
Baen Publishing Enterprises, March 1998, Mass-market, 467 pages
ISBN: 0-671-87865-4 Order from: Amazon.com Barnes & Noble.com