Customer Reviews

The Reformer (The Raj Whitehall Series, Book 7)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Agree that this book is not in the class or breadth as The Chosen.

But it was never intended to be. Rather, The Reformer is more along the lines of the first books of the General's series. -- The Forge.

Also the authors followed their trend of translating ancient engagements into this new science fiction military context. The Forge and what followed tracked with a Byzantine general's , Belasarius, actual exploits.

In The Reformer, Stirling and Drake examined Alexander the Great's actual siege of Tyre and created a plausible alternate ending.

Still a good read. I'm looking forward to the next one.

Hey, guys, what happened? The two of you are my favorite authors. But this book bears little resemblance to the preceding series, either in style or in entertainment value. It would be fun to watch Raj and Center and two cronies rip through the Roman Empire . . . but I have absolutely no sympathy for either of the main characters, and Raj/Center play only a tiny role in the story.

You also didn't give us a book! This thing is hardly four chapters of material, and ends in roughly the first third of what I would otherwise consider a novel.

I read it at my local bookstore. It was short enough to read in the store. I'm very disappointed and did not buy it.

I have to place this one purely in the middle of the pack. I was expecting something like the others in the series (The General, The Steel, The Chosen, etc.) and instead I get something more like a novella than a novel. Yes, it does clear 200+ pages, but the book feels like it was part of a larger one and set out before it was fully finished and polished. After all the first 10 of 14 chapters are available for reading on Baen's website. What I liked - seeing Drake and Stirling work with a pseudo-Roman empire. The peek into the world of the mind. What I didn't - Not enough development of characters. Felt too rushed in reading. And it was too short for a hardcover.

All in all I'd have been happier buying this in paperback, and I suspect you will too.

I agree with much of Mr. Bobbitt's review above. In addition to the Vanbert Confederation (late Roman Republic) and the Emeralds (Greeks after the Roman conquest), I would like to add Chalice (read Phoenician/Carthaginian). The book refers to an unnamed device used by Vanbert/Roman ships against the Chalice/Carthaginian ships to hustle their infantry across (a corvus - 1st Punic War). Additinally, these Emerald/Greeks reference a deity as the Grey-eyed-lady. That's Athena. There's a war-god, Wodep (Wotan). There's a reference to another war of Vanbert's many years before that sure looks like the exploits of a certain king of Epirus (hint - "One more victory like this will be the end of me."). Finally, the part that really had me groaning was an actual historical paraphrase from the King of Rope. The Greek word for the city called "rope" was Sparta.

The book settles down to a small war between Rome and Carthage with the cover art giving the hint "Roma delenda est". This is a simple word substitution for Cato the Elder's recurring theme, "Cartago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed).

There was a serious editing error that put all the maps at the end of the book rather than at the beginning. The normal reader won't go through the copyright, publisher, and library catalog page to discover that someone had gotten credit for "interior maps".

For those with little or no background in classical history, this book can be a good read. For those who have studied the history of the period between Alexander and Caesar, it requires a serious effort to achieve temporary amnesia.

There are two big problems with this book, and they are reallyas much the publisher's fault as the author's. As others have pointed out, this is only half a story. Actually it may be even less, depending on how many books there turn out to be in this series. My guess would be that this is a third of a story. This wasn't a problem in the GENERAL series. This hasn't bothered either of the two authors in other series they've written. There is some logic for ending this book where they did (I'm sure it looked great in outline). The authors never really developed a big culmination though. This book just kind of stops after one fight scene. It isn't even a battle as far as I am concerned.

This problem was compounded by Baen putting all but the last 4 chapters on their web site for free. After reading all that for free, I expected the pay story to go on for a while. It doesn't. I haven't counted pages, but I would estimate that there's only another 10% as far as length is concerned... If I thought the authors intended to leave things like this, I would only give this book one or two stars. The story is a follow-on to the GENERAL series, the same as "The Chosen" was. It is set in the later Roman Empire -- not a similar period, the actual Roman Empire. This Roman Empire just happens to have a different name, and be on a different planet, sometime in the future. (This is a little hoke, as some other reviewers have mentioned.) The characters are better developed than they were in "The Chosen", although not as well as they were in the GENERAL series.

My recommendation would be to read the Baen web page and pass on the book until there is a sequel, or better yet a boxed set.

After reading The Chosen this new book was a big disppointment. I think it should be renamed from the Reformer to the Unchosen. Should never have gotten published in Hardcover by Baen. No doubt there will be another 300 page 22.00 sequel but I'll stick to the paperbacks.

David Drake and Steve Stirling are two of the best military science fiction authors that exist, and have earned their excellent reputations. I'm afraid that this book didn't live up to them. This is based in the same Raj Whitehall/Center universe as the earlier excellent Forge and Chosen serieses. In Chosen we saw that the authors like to use historical events as fictional backgrounds for the plot. They do so in this book a little too much. For example the ConFed city and army were Roman. Not close to Roman but dead on for Roman, including camps, cities, armor, siege tactics, everything but assagi for swords. The Emeralds are the Greeks, including phalanax, philosiphers, Athena, and the legend of the Thousand Ship War (a war that takes a thousand ships, sound like Troy?). The main battle is Tyre, with a bit of gunpowder. The story is not that bad, but the societies were just too much Greek and Roman. And the book should have been longer, probably spread into two. The end leaves us knowing that another book will follow, hopefully it will be up to their usual standards.

An amazingly obtuse and sluggish book, especially after the fast pace of The General series and The Chosen. Usually can't put down one of Stirling's books; could barely force myself to finish this one. Don't care about the characters, and don't feel like the central premise of picked soldiers advancing civilization was advanced in any way.

A real disappointment from a usually reliable author.

And, by the way, if I hear the phrases "shattered like a glass jar dropped on a flagstone floor", "too mobile by half", or "he was much more than that now" in a Stirling book, I will scream. Indicative of lazy writing, with suspension of disbelief suffering the concequences.

I think that the reformer was a horrible story it was confusing,complex,boring, and the plot was terrible. Raj whitehall and Center hardly come into this story.I believe this book to be a huge failure for Stirling and Drake, two men, who are great sci-fi war-like writers.well this time they didn't live up to their talents.

In addition, i think it should'nt have a sequel to it, much less have a hard cover version of this horrible story.but thats my opinion, and it really does'nt matter to those who have not read book.but i have to say that it was a disasterous story, and a real waste of ink, by stirling and drake.

As a long time fan of this series I was very disappointed with this latest effort. Compaired to the earlier "The Chosen" this was a throwaway half measure. Not worth the price of admission.