Customer Reviews

The Prince

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

 

 

The Prince (2002) is an omnibus edition containing the four novels of the Falkenberg's Legion series. These novels are based on the CoDominium universe in which the US and USSR joined forces against the rest of the world and started colonizing planets, mostly with convicts and welfare clients. However, the CoDominium itself was not very stable and could have self-destructed at any time. Only the Fleet was holding together civilization.

In Falkenberg's Legions (1990), the first novel in the series, John Christian Falkenberg the Third joins the CoDominium Armed Services and serves on his first and his last assignments as a CoDominium officer. The novel itself incorporates two previous novels. West of Honor describes the admission of Falkenberg into the CoDominium service and his first field command on Arrarat with the 42nd Line Marine Regiment, where they fought against a former gang, the Mission Hills Protective Association. The Mercenary describes Falkenberg's last field command in the service with a cadre of men from the disbanded 42nd on a mission to stabilize the government of Hadley and the subsequent formation of the Legion. Additional material has been incorporated in this fixup to enrich the backstory.

In Prince of Mercenaries (1989), the second novel in the series, the Legion accepts a contract on Tanith to wipe out some pirate gangs and to quell a tax boycott by opposition planters who have employed another mercenary unit. Then the bulk of the Legion leaves Tanith on a mission to New Washington, where Colonel Falkenberg marries a local women and retires. This novel is a fixup of several shorter pieces with a framing story about a visit from Prince Lysanter of Sparta to discuss a contract for an advise and instruct mission.

In Go Tell the Spartans (1991), the third novel in the series, the Legion sends the 5th Battalion on a mission to Sparta to help train local troops, but they arrive only to discover that they are facing an insurrection.

In Prince of Sparta (1993), the fourth novel in the series, the 5th Battalion resumes its training mission after helping the Spartan troops to defeat the insurrection. However, enemy units are still conducting low level guerilla strikes and the Royal forces are trying to uncover the enemy supply lines.

This series portrays a wide variety of military operations and tactics with units of regimental strength or less; CoDominium unit sizes are limited because of mission parameters and funding whereas mercenary unit sizes are restricted by the CoDominium laws of war. Larger units are allowed or required only in the nationalist forces on Earth.

This series also reveals various aspects of military operations other than combat, including economics, logistics and intelligence. Also, it exposes the limits of military power: the power to kill is not the same as the power to compel. For the most part, these stories were inspired by historical situations; for example, the suppression of the Nika riots by Belisarius in 532 AD.

Recommended for Pournelle & Stirling fans and anyone else who enjoys SF tales of military forces in an alternate future.

-Arthur W. Jordin

It was Coleridge who coined the term, "...the willful suspension of disbelief", and it is this concept, I think, that marks successful fiction of every genre. It is the element that gets the reader "into" the story, and it is hardest to achieve in epic fantasy and military science fiction. This is because the writer has to do more than create believeable characters and plot; he/she has to create the very worlds in which the characters exist, including geography, politics, economics, etc. All of this comes across in superb manner in "The Prince". Originally published several years ago as four separate books, this is the story of the death of one civilization, and the gritty birth of another, from the standpoint of Falkenburg's Legion, a mercenary unit whose origins include such seemingly disparate military models as the Roman Legion and the French Foreign Legion. I would have given this book a 5 star rating but for a stylistic aspect that I have always found to be off-putting, because I find that it interrupts the story: in the first book, the writers switch between first person and third person narrative. It may be simply a personal quirk of mine, but there it is. On the other hand, the writing is of a consistantly high quality, and the plot move with a good pace and some very intense action. If you like the genre, read this book. Jim Baen of Baen Books has the inside track on military sci-fi, with a cadre of writers which includes David Weber (my alltime favorite), Eric Flint, David Drake and many others.
"The Prince" is a worthwile addition to the Baen Catalog and is sure to please most readers.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Finally, all of the Falkenberg / Sparta stories in one volume. This is classic Sci-Fi and also excellent fiction. Read it and you might learn something! Hopefully this will encourage Pournelle and Stirling to write more together.

Wow. I read The Mercenary when it first hit the stands (I was a high school freshman); I've stayed with Falkenberg, et at, ever since. Yes, Dr Pournelle can get a tad preachy at times (as do most of my favorites--Asimov, Bujold, Heinlein, and Weber to name a few)--and so what? He manages to work through his ongoing ruminations on the place of the soldier in society in an engaging and literate fashion. So many of his characters remind me of so many folks I knew when I served in the Army. I've always hoped that one day someone'd publish the stories in chronological order; I never dreamed that I'd finally get the whole lot in one massive volume. Now if we could get the same with the War World stories...

29 Jul 09 NOTE: I have no idea why White's Prince of Sunset is being shown here...

This book review refers to the series of books centering upon John Christian Falkenberg in the CoDominium universe. These stories have been printed several times, starting with short stories featured in magazines, and ending with the omnibus edition The Prince. For simplicity, if you want to read the whole thing, just get The Prince. There are some related stories that are found in other collections, such as "He Fell Into a Dark Hole" in Black Holes. However, the tales collected in The Prince form a coherent whole.

I have never wanted to be anyone more than I want to be Colonel John Christian Falkenberg. Falkenberg serves as my archetype of a leader; he exerts a magnetic attraction upon me, despite not being real. For clarity, I entitled this review with his name, but the truth is John Christian does not even appear in the last two volumes, although his presence is felt everywhere. Even when absent, he can influence events and the minds of men. A discourse on leadership could be created from this work. However, that is not the task here. Let us discuss the story.

When Pournelle and Niven created the CoDominium, a post-Cold War alliance between the US and the USSR, it was science fiction. Now, it is alternative history. It is interesting to see what has come true and what has not been realized in history. Technology has fallen far behind the timetable Pournelle set, but social order has proven stronger. There is nothing quite so frightening as the Welfare Islands of the United States, vast Le Corbusier constructions full of the indolent and angry, kept complacent only by the public provision of mind-numbing substances. Other authors have predicted similar urban decay [David Feintuch for example], but Pournelle's dystopia is disturbing for its plausibility. I have actually met the forefathers of the Citizens who inhabit the Welfare Islands, and I do not find them congenial company.

By the mid-twenty first century, American politics on Earth are riven by the conflicts between the prole Citizens and the Taxpayer class who support them, but Earth itself is tettering on the brink of war due to resurgent nationalism. The CoDominium wields great power, but the political will to sustain this unnatural alliance is waning. Adding to the discontent is a general ban on scientific research. The CoDominium had at first simply sought to prevent weapons research to preserve the status quo, but it quickly became apparent that just about any science has potential military applications, so they just ended up banning everything. Physicists are licensed and tracked, as potential enemies of the state.

John Christian Falkenberg III is born into interesting times in 2043, in Rome. The ancient city is outside of the jurisdiction of either of the superpowers, so Falkenberg has no other option than to seek the stars, that that there is much opportunity left on Earth. The US is now a caste society, and the USSR has become much like China today but without the economic growth, theoretically Communist but really a mercantilist military state. At least 40 worlds have been settled by the use of the Alderson drive [invented before 2010!], but the CoDominium uses these worlds as pressure relief valve by shipping out political dissidents and criminals as involuntary colonists.
The CoDominium Navy is tasked with keeping the peace both on Earth and her colonies, but as the alliance fades away so does its budget. John Christian Falkenberg steps into this gap, not entirely voluntarily himself. Falkenberg is an officer in the CoDo Marines, a service that traces back to the French Foreign Legion. The Navy is an interesting amalgam of American and Russian customs, but the Marines maintain the traditions of the Légion étrangère.

Falkenberg is tasked with preserving public order in the colonies, in the hope that civilization may survive the coming conflagration on Earth. The political landscape of Earth is based in part upon the work of The Evolution of Political Thought by C. Northcote Parkinson [this is detailed in A Step Further Out], who sought to update Aristotle's Politics with the data of twenty-five intervening centuries. The title of the omnibus work is taken from Machiavelli; this is an extended discourse upon politics in novel form. About the same time I was reading these, my wife was reading a biography of Henry VIII. Without even being told of the collected work's title, she commented that the plot "sounded Machiavellian." Indeed.

One could also learn a great deal from this work about small unit tactics and guerilla warfare. As I noted before, hard scifi is not necessarily about technology. Due to the CoDominium's technology restrictions, and the poor economic development of the colonies, battlefield tactics resemble WWII or Korea, except with much smaller forces. Falkenberg's Legion is on the order of 5,000 men, and it is usually a decisive unit in theater, if not the only one. As the state contracts from its Great Lifetime peak, smaller concentrations of force can effectively disrupt the social order, but it also takes smaller forces to rout the brigands.

Pournelle's great contributions to scifi are his wealth of historical knowledge and his psychological acumen. Both are on display here. There is an especially poignant chapter of Prince of Mercenaries [originally a short story] based upon the Spanish Civil War. However, what interests me the most is Falkenberg's character. Despite the Late Republic setting of The Prince, Falkenberg exhibits the virtues of Cinncinatus. He really wants nothing more than to be able to ret

I'd read the Falkenberg books here-and-there years ago. When I saw them all together in one volume, I snapped this book up immediately.

The stories are well-written. Pournelle & Stirling write excellent military sci-fi. However, I did not enjoy this read quite as much as I remember. It wasn't so much the point-of-view (1st vs. 3rd) that others mention, or even the odd pacing (where the action builds to a climax, and stops short). Instead, it was the setting that was mildly annoying.

I have no problem with the CoDominium, even though it has been passed up by history. I read enough Alternate History fiction that the CoDo falls into that category in my mind. What was irksome for me was the technology controls (and other plotting decisions) that were designed to create WWII-style battles, clearly Pournelle's favorite. The alien worlds were vaguely detailed, with Tanith being the best. But really, the worlds were designed only to have different locations for battles. You could drop any one of the battles onto some Earth location, with no difference. What about tainted atmospheres, truly alien fauna and flora, odd rotational effects, etc.?

That said, it was good reading -- and Stirling's contributions are definitely a plus.

I have owned and red all the stories in the book many years ago. But it way like seeing an old friend you haven't seen in a long time. Putting the whole thing together was wonderful. I only wish that Mr Pournelle and his editors would have included all of the 42th and Leigon stories. I especially like the short piece on John Christiam taking over as Commander of the 42th. Now if there were only stories about the formation of the First Empire. . .

Based on the title, inside jacket synopsis, and first couple of pages of the book one would think they were going to read about a 21st century Richard "Dick" Sharpe.

One would be totally wrong.

First of all the title character is barely even in the book. Second his 'Legion' is barely discussed also. Essentially the book is about other characters/organizations besides Faulkenbergs Legion.

I thought I was going to be reading about a "military genius", a master of military tactics however, Pournelle gives no basis [that might not be totally accurate, his fater was a military historian, but Pournelle didnt have Faulkenberg remembering lessons from ancient battles to win current battles] or examples of the title characters military "genius". One of the major shortcomings of the book is that according to the story when the fate of "civilization" hanged in the balance and could only be decided by a 'battle' the main character was not even present. Furthermore, he was barely even mentioned in the last book.

I guess one could say that the book was not about 'Faulkenberg' but about his 'Legion'. That would be a fair argument except once again when the battle for civilization was to take place Faulkenbergs Legion was not present.

Who was present?

The non-combatants, families, children, and the aged[members close to retirement]. That is hardly a "Legion".

Pournelle did not center the books around one character which is ok [i guess] but he didnt give any examples of how characters got their skills. Characters start off as new Lieutenants and are not mentioned again until they're Lt. Colonels.

The book probably would have been better if Pournelle would have showed how Faulkenberg learned the battle skills needed to win a battle to save civilization. However, he did not. Even if it wasn't Faulkenberg, at least show a specific soldier go from green recruit to battle tested veteran.

For all those familiar with the Sharpe Series and who have read this book, could you imagine the scenes with Sharpe and Harper training the Spartans?

For all those looking for books that show/follow a military career from the ranks to command (and battles in between)look at the Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwell.