In Fury Born (Fury Series #2) Book

"Oh, horsefeathers!" Direct quote from the AI entity birthed some 900 years into our future which is touted on the book's cover read.

Bring a sketchpad with you because David Weber has a thing for names. I am confident in saying that there isn't a single chapter in this 828 MASSIVE book that doesn't introduce some new character by name. (often there are several) There is a nearly 30 page section in the back which is dedicated to the names of characters. Yes that is right... 30 pages of names. If that isn't indication enough of his odd insistence in naming every meaningless character in a book, you had better draw a map to keep track of who goes where as you go.
Weber doesn't just stop with meaningless characters, he names all of his ships with human names and even planets.

The book is an adapted rewrite of a previous work from the same author. I have not read the previous novel but I feel safe in saying that I know EXACTLY where the added material lies. The newer "prequel" material is heavy politico-military intrigue and has almost no action in it whatsoever. The character cast is humongous and undeveloped. The military side of the novel is obviously the focal point for the author and while it is fun to read about a hero rising to their position by way of a sort of infallible happenstance of genetics and personality traits the protagonist feels unbelievable at best.

The early science fiction material feels like glitter sprinkled onto the very modern day analogues of the military structure and mannerisms. I am not sure how many times I read the phrase "Kicking ass and taking names" before I started to roll my eyes at the audacious transparency of the soldiers as they were written. Much of the book feels incongruous as the exponentially over powered special forces are repeatedly faced down by rebels. (That is in the 2 battles that take place in the novel before page 400.)

As you finally reach the point that the book transitions over into what the book reviews and covers claim it to be, you may realize that the entire preceding work of nearly 450 pages was completely unnecessary. Only a few of the characters mean anything at that point and the real development of the protagonist doesn't develop until after that point. Everything that occurs in the previous segments is covered in review as it becomes important. Anything previous to that point could have also been done in a much more concise and clean way that left it with more feeling and resonance on a personal level.

Which brings to point the whole theme of the book, fury. DeVries, the protagonist, is supposedly so taken with rage and hatred that a Fury forms a symbiosis with her out of mutual interest for vengeance. But, the fury never really comes across as real. The characters develop a friendship which comes across as a sisterly bickering and playfulness. As the AI, which seems very much like a teenager with a knack for old aged catch phrases, feels like a joke in herself. In an odd way there are not really even characters, and more like three shades of the same character. They don't distinguish and she basically has an inner monologue to herself from different perspectives.

My first Weber experience, this book left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I found myself chipping away at the book with a meticulous monotony which drained me of spirit and ambition to even finish it. I don't often give up on a book and I didn't in this case either, though, I wish I had. In the end I felt like the book disappointed me even in climax as the development and fruition never seemed to come. The consequences never felt serious and the characters never felt genuine or believable to me. The military focus might suit some readers' interests. I don't mind it myself. However, it felt empty and pointless in the grand scheme. You could simply read the cover synop and jump straight to the last 100 pages or so and call it good.

In the end I really felt like I hated this book. Some of the technology was fun but a lot of it started to drop away from imaginative technospeculation towards fantastic magical "I-dunno-hows". This is ok in small quantities but eventually gets old. The various levels of "synth" technology which allow the soldiers to see the world around them and communicate to each other electronically smacks of simple video game fare so loudly that it hurts. The obvious analogous transitions to modern day military corps, personalities, tensions, and settings all felt unintentional, implying to me that the writer likes to take representation of something else from another body of work and change the names on it.

I don't often shoot down an author on the first work of their's I have read but I doubt I will revisit Weber again any time soon.

"Oh, horsefeathers"