Insurrection (Starfire Series #1) Book

Mawkish, melodramatic, MIL-SF, space opera riffing on WWII Pacific War naval combat, The American Revolution and Civil War. I suppose that make it a: MIL-SF, political thriller?

I read this book years ago when I was a callow youth. I remembered it fondly for its C. S. Forester-esque style. Now, being considerably better read I can see the influence of Herman Wouk's The Winds of War a historical thriller, written about 20-years earlier than this one.

This wasn't a bad story MIL-SF story, as hard as it is to write good MIL-SF. As a space opera it also wasn't too bad. For example, it was actually a good example of the Hyperspace Lanes, men and women heroes stepping-up to meet the mighty hour and ships launched out into the louring dark tropes.

However, the purple prose was laughable. I listened to this book. I couldn't tell if there were strings of multisyllabic words, run-on sentences, and blocks of unyielding text like in A Memory Called Empire , but the descriptions were just chock-full, of overly embellished language. It was as Homer-esque as the wine dark sea. The overall effect was mawkish and melodramatic.

The story had a the cast of thousands. There were six or eight POVs phasing in and out of the narrative over a six year duration. All the protagonists (men and women)were noble warriors and honorable. In addition, there was a host of minor NPCs. The authors were fond of the technique of giving them first and last names to thicken their cardboard nature. Many NPCs were red shirts sacrificed to the carnage of space war.

I noted there were very few black characters, but lots of Latinx and Asians. The story also contained several racial faux pas. "Oriental" was used to describe folks of "Asian" extraction, be they Japanese or Chinese. Although, in 1990, when written, that usage was changing. I did roll my eyes at the faux, interstellar, racial equality. Almost every Terran race made an appearance. An oriental [sic], female, naval officer calling her officer, Anglo, gal-pal a "round-eye", shows they're all one, big, happy, Terran family?

I also shook my head at the false feminism in the story. Making half the story's POVs, strong, women was a too overt play for the Feminist Fantasy readership. These characters where boys with breasts. What distinguished them from the strong men, was the way they afterwards, expressed their grief over the carnage of the epic space battles. Weber eventually wrote himself a pension this way with the Honorverse .

If you're a student of history, you'll see how heavily the authors borrowed from the great naval battles of the Pacific during WWII. For example, there was a thinly disguised Battle of Midway climactic, epic, space battle. (All the space battles were epic.) Tech reminded me of a lift from Lensman series only with computers, lasers, and misunderstood cryptography. The space science (Hyperspace Lanes aside) inconvenient towards maintaining the WWII naval warfare paradigm were ignored. For example, space is vast, empty, cold and dark. A spaceship, especially a large one, is reflective and radiant at many wavelengths. Its observable from great distances, especially during deceleration (a bit of space flight physics ignored in the narrative). The stealthy attacks of the story would not be possible. In addition, the political aspects of the story were rather naïve. They were there to setup the epic space battles. It was a mashup of the American Revolution and the American Civil War'IN SPACE.

Thirty years ago, when written to satisfy the sf needs of MIL-SF nerds limping along on the Star Trek (Gen I) and Aliens franchises, this was likely haute, sf literature. Today, its eye-rollingly amusing. However, both authors leveraged this early work to go on feeding, clothing and housing themselves writing similar, if slightly better stories of the same ilk. Recommended for sf nerds who liked reading fiction based on age-of-sail, Royal Navy officer protagonists (in space) in series novels.