Customer Reviews

Fall With Honor: A Novel of the Vampire Earth

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's sad to me when the best part of a book is when old characters that you knew put in a cameo appearance. Fall with Honor was a let down to me because Val seems to just going through the motions. There is an interesting mission and there could be interesting characters, but the writing feels like Knight has gotten bored with writing about this subject and doesn't really give it his best.

Book 7 and Val is taking part in an effort to start another area of human control in a Kurian zone. He's worn down, tired, broken to a greater or lesser degree, but for some reason none of that really matters because he is still Val. The folks who surround him seem to be just different iterations of many similar characters that we fought, served with and hated before. It's frustrating because there is so much more to be told about this series.

What really bothers me is that with a little more work and design there is a lot of very interesting things that could be happening. The potential is really great in that Knight has left enough loose ends out there for some great stuff to come of it. I just wish that he would get as deeply involved as it felt like he was in the past.

I've read every book in this series and the Dragon series, and so far have had nothing but praise for Knight.

This book is disappointing.
-What's up with the "let's bring back every major character from other books back"? This idea was poorly executed and becomes a bit too unbelievable.
-The characters are shallow. Compared to previous Valentine books, these guys are just zombies.
-The writing style itself is different. While the previous books were, for the most part, page turners, this one reads as if a boring college professor is discussing a small war in a country you don't care about.
-The main idea behind this book is pointless. Basically, if you don't read this book, you wont miss much.

However, Knight has proved that he can write a good book, and it's way too early to give up on him just because of one bummer.

I've followed the vampire earth series for quite some time now. I thought the first 5 were great. However, the last two, Fall with Honor especially, have lost a lot of what made the others fun to read. There's no real excitement or internal struggle. Characters have lost their depth. It feels like Knight has run out of ideas and is just plodding along with the story because he's supposed to.

No good story should be drug on forever.

If you're a fan of the series, I'm sure you'll read it. Just don't expect much. Hopefully the next one will revive the series and turn toward a conclusion.

This was by far the worst book in this series. Don't get me wrong, I love David Valentine, but the character is aging. What happened to the young David Valentine? Anyways, the story was really weak. Without spoiling it, the climax was horribly lame. You'll read this and be like... "Dude just roll in there and kill people!" But unfortunately he won't. If you've read all the books up to this, then you're going to read this book, as did I, but you'll find this doesn't meet up to the standards of the other books. At least I didn't. Now I need to read Jhegaala (if you haven't read that series, check it out).

The quote at the beginning of the novel, which includes the title, sets the stage for the plot. It's taken from the Anabasis of Xenophon, which concerned an army finding itself alone in suddenly hostile territory,and conducting a fighting withdrawal against overwhelming odds. (Interestingly enough, this basic plot concept will also be used in Paul Kearney's upcoming epic fantasy, The Ten Thousand.) Both Kearney and Knight employ realistic military background in their stories, but within totally different frameworks, as Knight's work features a future alien-invaded Earth, not a fantasy world.

This particular volume finds protagonist David Valentine leading one branch of an attempt by the human resistance movement to establish a freehold in the Appalachian Mountains. But there are traitors and double agents everywhere, and the alien Kurians are nothing if not clever and implacable adversaries. Valentine's superiors find themselves trapped in enemy land and trying to escape with their army intact to fight another day.

Knight's strengths lie in his ability to create a military resistance that seems completely plausible because of the thought and detail used to describe it. He couples this with excellent characterization, and the result is that a reader not only believes that Earth could be like this if occupied by an alien species, but the reader pulls for the three-dimensional and very sympathetic humans who are trying to survive and overthrow the tyrannical new order.

I will admit that the novel opens slowly, if one is expecting non-stop action, but Knight carefully constructs the military machine that is necessary to allow a cross-country journey and an attempt to finally go on the offensive against the alien nemesis. The pay-off is worth it, as the last 150 pages are quite suspenseful and harrowing, and portray Knight at his best.

Vampire Earth reminds me of David Gerrold's War Against the Chtorr, but unlike that series, the reader is rewarded with a book of consistently high quality every year, not a never-ending wait. It deserves a wide readership.

I was soooo looking forward to the first entire book that Valentine was a Bear. He went red once. As in Tale of the Thunderbolt... once again it appears that Valentine has lost all of his hunter traits.

We were at a time where it seemed that Valentine would exceed any expectations of strength, speed and endurance than any other hunter bar none. This book portrays him as a broken down mid level field grade officer. I remember one part where he said that you only recover 90 percent of what you had before and he wondered how many 90%'s he had.

Come on. The stage is set up and you have to continually wait for any type of action, all this book is a bunch of self doubts and filler. Very predictable with predicatable twists.

What this series needs is exactly what most other longer series needs, the stage is set so lets get to some character development and see some action.

Even though we have now finally seen Bears in action, we have never had good descriptions of what happens and goes on in the Bears minds. That would be great to read.

I thought I'd never see the day when the VE series "jumped the shark." By the end of the previous book, we we're just beginning to unravel the mysteries of Valentine's heritage and his newly awakened powers. Our hero was waging an epic one-man war against the Kurians from coast-to-coast. VE had horror and drama and a sense of building momentum. If you were having a good time then, get ready to be disappointed.

Fall with Honor reads like a particularly bland article in Civil War Reenactor's Monthly. I was bored to the point where I felt tempted to skip entire pages. Valentine has become an average Joe battling middle age as much as the Kurians. It's hard to believe this is the same guy who ripped off a Reaper's arm with his bare hands.

I really hope Knight can get back on track. I'd hate to see VE go over a cliff the way Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series did.

This is still a perfectly enjoyable book and I had fun although I will admit certain cracks are starting to show.

The characterization is fine and David Valentine has not changed a bit he still kicks butt and he is still fighting a desperate battle against insurmountable odds these are the good parts. I also like that he actually acquires scares over the course of his long struggle to many times these types of main characters never get a scratch; it just goes to show you that war is hell.

The parts that dragged for me and took the punch out of what was an otherwise great book are

1. the interaction between Valentine and the White Fangs this ability that Valentine has to be a master negotiator all the time in all situations is wearing a little thin for me.

2. Also the interaction between Valentine and the half grog son he adopted named Blake once was fine but twice is frustrating. I bought to read about Valentine the killer of Kur vampire lords not to hear another installment in the life of Valentine the affectionate father figure. If Knight is setting this up so that in a few books Blake's blood will be the start of some kind of biological weapon like in "V" I'm going to stop reading the series now.
3. The characters that screwed Valentine over two installments ago get by with barely a slap on the wrist. The characters that I have come to know and love make either a very brief appearance or no appearance at all.

I love the Vampire Earth series and I liked the point of this installment when it finally arrived but I was missing some old friends. I have to have faith that Knight will tighten things up and everything will be back to normal.

This edition of the Vampire Earth series is as good as the others, and continues the escapades of David Valentine, with a few twists that land him in hot water for a while. Overall, this has been a fun series to read. I always look forward to the next edition.

Before I requested this book (my dad got it for me for Christmas) I had read reviews saying it was basically a poor written reunion piece.
I was pleasantly surprised then when I read it and found only 7 old character reintroduced, with plot feeding reasons with the exception of two who served as emotional catalyst for David, and just a few quick updates on other which any person would share when they found the information out, or reminisced of the past.
It may not be the best story in the series (it was a little boring in places kind of slow and unlike the others there didn't feel like a big victory or that David was moving forward at the end) but as a part of a bigger story its great.
In a movie series this would be the third or forth widely seen but not as popular movie.