Customer Reviews

Hell's Gate

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

The first fifty pages of this book sucked. I was ready to toss the book out the window. Good thing you can't open windows on the airplane.

It's the first book in a series about the multiverse. It's basically a chain of universes linked together by portals with the same planet at it's center. At one end of the chain are the Arcanans, a universe where the code of magic has been broken and is used for everyday life. At the other end of the chain are the Sharonans. They use technology of the 1880's. The laws of physics apply in that neck of the wood. Except they have a high percentage of telepaths. The Sharonans are up to steam power and gunpowder and are working on oil.

The two civilizations meet at one of the portals, which they call Hell's Gate because of all the shooting involved from both sides.

Why did I hate the first fifty pages. My god did they need editing. It was page after page of exposition and tangents. Both authors felt the pressing need to tell us everything about everyone. I can understand the need to explain the world and it's people, but it never let up. They'd be in the middle of an action sequence and suddenly it was time to talk about the main Sharonan women's mother and father and how she was an ambassador to the cetaceans and how she lived on this spit of land near the ocean and there was a bell the dolphins could ring to get her attention and her father and it would not stop. You forgot what the hell was going on by the time you got back from the byway. It was like a first novel without an editor.

They eventually toned the exposition down but it would creep in through out the novel. Isn't it better to do things in novels rather than talk about them?

Eventually the action moved forward and the pace picked up. In the beginning both sides of the shooting incidents were good guys appalled by the bloodshed. Then the incompetents showed up to make the misunderstanding worse. It's typical Weber. There are only supremely competent individuals or supremely incompetent individuals. And if one of the Competents is in a jam, an incompetent will come along and make the situation worse. There are no shades of grey.

Fortunately, before everything gets sorted out, opposing parties in the Sharonan and Arcanan universes see oppurtunities for advancement by escalating the conflict.

The second half of the book was okay. There is a noticeable rise in tension. All the opposing sides are being drawn nicely. I'm just hoping they get a really good editor before the next book.

And one last quibble, what's with Weber and his fascination with people carrying around pets? In the Honorverse, we had the Cats. In this book it's Birds of Prey. Why? Why do some people always have to have a semi-sentient familiar? Couldn't you find some other way to make the people stand out?

As a few other reviewers have noted, this book bogs down repeatedly on endless expositions about the nature of the two different multiverses and their diverse cultures. The problem is that by the time you're halfway through the book you practically need a Clifnote edition just to keep track of who's who and what's happening next. And after what seems like the 37th exposition about how long it takes to travel from one end of the multiverse to the other it's to the point of "Get ON with it!"

All in all, wait until you can pick this up cheap. It's not worth the full hardcover price; it's not even worth half that. Considering I am normally one of David Weber's biggest fans, that's saying a lot.

I just managed to plod through this first of a new series, and I must say that I find it less than enjoyable. W Boudville's review of the book is quite appropriate here. I agree that it is much like the war in the Pacific, and most of his further description.

My biggest gripes were the sheer complexity of the names: I could not keep track of them as I would have liked. And what makes this so perplexing is that the use of current time, volume, and distance are in our language, yet the names are not. This is a bit far fetched. Further, the lack of maps or indexes are frustrating, because the book is very difficult to keep complete track of all the kingdoms and worlds. Certainly not advantageous to a good series.

Here is something that I did not see mentioned by others: the blending of fiction and fantasy. I am Not a fan of fantasy, so I find the use of 'magic' to be not to my liking. I will probably take a raincheck on further books in the series. I have been noticing that this blend of science fiction and fantasy seems to be going strong within the Bean Books world of late. Even John Ringo, and some others have preceeded Weber, and I have not bothered to take the bait there either. Sorry, but I will stick to more mainstream SF.

Fortunately, I did not spend any money on this book, but checked it out from the library. Money well saved.

I do, he's my favourite author - but this is terrible.

There are too many characters with too many complex names. It reads like a rookie novel before the editor has been at it and cut down the cast of thousands. Consequently, there isn't enough room to draw any of the characters in depth and I can find little empathy for any of them.

The whole premise of the book is high-tech society meets high sorcery society and the two end up going to war after a series of aggressive mistakes.

Classic Weber we either have wonderfully competent characters or horribly incompetent/vicious ones. Don't mind that, I'm used to it, but - I guess my whole problem with the story is that it falls somewhere between two genres, sci fi space opera and proper fantasy. Now Weber has done both magnificently (if you're a starter to his work, try Path of the Fury and Oath of Swords for good examples) but the issue here for me is that the tech society isn't tech enough and the magical society isn't magical enough. They're both kinda somewhere in the middle and the result - is just a muddle. Half the time as the story jumped around I was trying to figure out which society whoever I was reading about happened to be in.

A mess, Dave. I love you, but NO. Get back to writing more Honor/Bahzell/Alicia DeVries. Don't waste your time on this - PLEASE.

I seldom buy hardcovers but I was waiting for this book so... I sprung for it and promptly regretted my decision. The book is overly concerned with minute details. D. Weber has a great story telling style but I cannot believe he had anything to do with what went on in this book. It was just a big setup for the next book with plodding asides, usless digressions, forgettable characters, this book has it all.

The editing in the first 50 or 60 pages left a lot to be desired. All in all a tiresome read and certainly one that will color my interests in upcoming Weber books.

What started out as an interesting idea turned into a chore to read. Whenever they threw in the made up names for the various places on the two "earths" the flow of the story came to a screaching halt with my mind struggling to put together the clues that pointed to where on our Earth the action was taking place.

It was over 500 pages into the book before they described what the Arcanan military titles actually meant. Which is to say that the book was nearly done and they were still setting up the universe. You'd think that after 800 pages something would have been accomplished but it feels like it was only the prelude.

The novel could easily have been edited down to half it's current length without hurting the story. I eventually just started skimming through the second half only stopping when interesting things were happening and I don't feel I missed much.

I would not recomend this novel to Weber fans.

I wanted to like this book. I REALLY wanted to like this book. From prior reviews and the plot description, it seemed to have at least the potential to rival Keith Laumer's "Worlds of the Imperium" series or H. Beam Piper's "Paratime" series.

Instead, upon opening the book, I was greeted with a mass of made-up names reminiscent of 1940's SF--BAD 1940's SF--to the point where I was unable to figure out who was whom. Add to this a hefty dose of military minutae, rank titles that seem to have been borrowed from the Romans, and a plot that really doesn't move at any great pace, and no evidence of any divergent cultures (or any cultures) in the mass of parallel worlds and my disappointment only grew and grew. I found it difficult to identify enough with any of the characters to really care what happened to them, and totally confused by the alternate worlds setup and unable to see how it worked.

This book would have greatly benefited from a cast of characters (as in Mr. Weber's "Shadow of Saganami") and a diagram of the parallel world branchings. If we could be provided with star maps in the Honor Harrington books, I don't see why such a diagram could not be given here.

The Honor Harrington series now runs to eleven or twelve books, plus many short stories. If future books in this series are the same as this one, for the sake of both readers and trees, I hope the series will be a short one.

If you've never read a Weber novel then I'd say the book rates 4 stars.

If you were looking for a nice "young adult book" or you are into romance novels then this would be a good read...just take some tranqs first for the descriptive parts.

However, were you looking for something on the lines of Mr. Weber & Mr. Whites' Starfire series, look elsewhere, this one is a bit of a letdown and is certainly not one of Weber's best.

I don't know if Mr Weber just can't drop his previous series but the characters in Hell's Gate as well as the overall plot closely resemble that of the Honor Harrington series. Some other letdowns include:

Quite bit of genre stereotyping (Dragons & Fireballs in fantasy settings);

Badly mixed genres with improbable technology evolution (using computer terminology to describe Magic & define its structure, sorry Dave, Rick Cook did it already & much better);

Dialog & descriptions written for teen & tween comprehension (I'm not trying to be insulting to the younger readers...its just the plot is a tad basic/contrived with very little subtlety);

Repetitive dialog and an overabundance of setting description placed in inconvenient/odd moments (you do not describe a persons history, addendum, in the middle of a fire-fight, it detracts from the action sequence).

This is almost a first. A Weber book that I really didn't like too much (the other being Insurrection w/ Steve White). I don't know, it's an excellent premise (the Multiverse), but it's just not written well: It's a bit too slow and boring, and I felt that some of the characters were being led by the hand by Weber (meaning that they easily figured things out that should have been nearly impossible). Furthermore, there is way too much animosity between characters on one side of it (seems like it's the side that Linda Evans wrote, probably). Oh, well, hopefully he won't write too many more books that are as bad as John Ringo's stuff.

As a long time Weber fan I was disappointed by this plodding, predictable and ponderous attempt. As other reviewers noted, too many "J" names and way to many irrelevant details, all detailed in exquisite...you guessed it...detail. Part of the problem is with the original conceit which is parallel universes. The problem arises with both universes being complex which makes for twice as much exposition....some of which is not altogether bad, but overall it makes for slow going. There were some incongruous moments, like the trip back to Arcona during which the two lead female characters are relaxing in deck chairs--just two babes catching some rays on the cruise home and they talk about....genetics. I guess exposition is where you find it. If I had it to do over, I would wait for the paperback.