Customer Reviews

Starship: Mutiny (Starship, Book 1) (Bk. 1)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Starship: Mutiny is supposed to be space opera about a character who is so competent and clever that he doesn't fit in to the military establishment. A fine idea, but Resnick doesn't pull it off.

Some spoilers ahead.

The problem with creating a character who is supposed to be supremely clever is that the writer has to be as clever as the character is supposed to be. Resnick isn't up to the task and fudges. His main character uses ridiculously confident suppositions and pretends they are clever deductions. In one instance a Cole comes across two destroyed ships and an enemy who chases him only so far. From that and that alone he confidently asserts that the **only** possibility is that the ship is guarding a meeting of individuals on some nearby planet, and bets the life of his shipmates on it. What????? That wild guess is supposed to be clever? Resnick tries to pass off such guesses as extreme cleverness and it doesn't work.

In another scenario, Cole finds enemy troops from a distant planet in an un populated volcanic mountain range on an another planet. From that he deducts that the enemy's planet is out of energy and has come to that one to quickly steal energy from the volcanoes--all without any knowledge of the enemy or of any sort of volcano energy stealing technology. And, of course, it makes soooooo much sense to steal heat energy from a volcano to transport back by spaceship to the enemy's home planet when you have **spaceships** that can approach stars. It is like reading a science fiction plot by an elementary school student.

There are some engaging elements in Starship Mutiny, enough to make me read to the end to find out what happens, but the story is filled with the "clever" Commander Cole explaining himself at length to show off how clever he is. Since Cole isn't actually clever that makes for way too much talking and only serves to emphasize aggravating gaffe after gaffe. Cole never comes off as legitimately competent, nor does he even seem to have the knowledge of ships and ship handling that a twice demoted captain who has had command of two large vessels should have.

I like many of Resnick's other works. His attempts in this genre just don't work for me. For light space opera authors like Elizabeth Moon, Lois McMaster Bujold and even David Drake's light space opera RCN series are all vastly superior.

In this easy reading story, the protagonist is an extremely competent naval officer with a record of success in the long war that forms the background of the story. The problem is that the success has come at the price of embarrassing senior officers who are less than competent. So while his success protects him, it also sends him into exile where it is hope he will not further embarrass his seniors. He is demoted and sent as second officer to a ship crewed by misfits in a sector without any possibility of seeing action. The plan does not work as predicted.

The plan does not work because the officer IS competent. He sees signs of enemy activity and acts on them. He does so with brilliance and success...and further embarrassment to his seniors. The reward for his excellence is punishment. The steps he takes to protect himself are dire.

The book is well written and light. It is enjoyable without requiring overmuch in the way of thinking. It is mild amusement and I will gladly read any sequels.

This series was the first Resnick I've read, and I was heartily disappointed, especially given the awards the author has won for other books.

One doesn't expect high literature from just-for-fun scifi entertainment, but one does expect substantially more thought, effort and care to go into it than I found in this series, which seems inadequately conceived, inattentively written, and poorly edited.


(Mild spoilers alert)


The series' strong point is its focus on mind over matter: the protagonist outsmarting his enemies. That's always fun. There are also some entertainingly conceived characters - the alien who has decided to mimic Victorian dress and mannerisms is quite amusing, as is the red-headed pirate queen.

But those are about the only positive things in it.



The "world" of the series as a whole is poorly and inadequately conceived. Weapons, tactics, science, communication, geography, politics - none of these are credible or consistent, but morph around whatever the needs of the current "plot puzzle" is. This stretches from big things - no consistency in issues of communication, transportation, and interstellar travel (when these things are even addressed at all) - to little things (e.g. at one point the crew has drugs which can make anyone reveal anything; later we're told that only torture can elicit information; later again both are options).


The characters - even the entertainingly conceived ones (whom the author quickly manages to make boring) - are flat and static throughout the entire series. Their actions, interactions, conversations and conflicts are just variations on the same themes, over and over, with little change, development or nuance.


Even the writing is repetitive and bland: for instance (one example among several), as the hero wanders rather aimlessly from room to room in his ship (which he does a lot), more often than not he steps out of one room and "a moment later" steps into the next. The question of the ship's layout - and relative proximity of the rooms - aside, surely it would be possible to provide a bit more linguistic variety rather than constantly reusing the same cookie-cutter phrases. (There's also a lot of people "noting", as a synonym for "saying", which always annoys me, but that's just a pet peeve.)



For those who expect military tactics or strategy, look elsewhere. It's not just that military concerns are not the focus of the series (which is fine, even refreshing), but that any sort of intelligent use of weapons or tactics seems to be all but completely missing from this universe (except for the hero's of course): the antagonists use their ships and plan their actions so poorly and incompetently that a seven year old could defeat them. Basically, except for the protagonist, the whole rest of the universe (including his crew) must be assumed to be incredibly stupid and incompetent, else the fellow wouldn't last five minutes. It's not just that the hero's assumptions are *always* right (even when there are several equally rational and plausible interpretations of a situation), but that the "baddies" overlook the most obvious ways to defeat him.

For example, a set of baddies, knowing that they're going to meet an enemy, send two of their number in to negotiate without keeping in any sort of communication with them. The hero can then explain his identity and plans to them, incapacitate them, sneak out and neutralize the rest of the landing party, and then take over their orbiting ship... all because the baddies, apparently, are too stupid to keep in touch with each other or monitor the situation. Simply not credible.

This is a flaw not just with specific scenes but with the general "setting" of the stories. E.g. with apparently instantaneous communication across thousands of light years (which is never explained), the huge enemy Republic of millions of ships and overpowering might and manpower still doesn't have *any* agents in the fringe areas (areas they regularly visit) to alert them of the hero's whereabouts, even when said hero is broadcasting his presence and intentions on open channels in a major fringe world space station (which the Republic regularly visits for clandestine meetings), holding thousands of transient humans & aliens, any one of whom could easily be a Republic agent.

Toward the end of the final book, the hero has to confront the Republic's chairman in person - which he does by a ruse, being taken to see him as if captured. We are told - repeatedly - that the chairman's office is the most heavily guarded room on the most heavily guarded planet in human history. The security officer who escorts them has his id chip scanned and bone structure analyzed before he can even get into the building. The (supposed) prisoners are even scanned for microscopic bombs before being allowed in to the office. And yet the supposed navy "captors" (actually the hero's accomplices who are impersonating Republic officers) are never so much as asked for a photo id. Not only does no one check to see if they are who they pretend to be, they are even let in to the chairman's office *with their weapons*. Like so much of the series, this leaves the reader thinking "this makes no sense". No, it doesn't. But it's the "brute force" way to get to the situation the author wanted.


In brief, all the "conflicts" and "adventures" are structured around creating situations in which the "clever hero" can impress his (fairly obtuse) crew and outwit the "baddies" - and everything is warped to make those (often quite threadbare) scenarios work out, regardless of how completely unrealistic or inconsistent the resulting situation and universe - and the characters - are forced to become in order to accommodate the sloppy conception and execution.



Additionally, much of the series is just boilerplate. Occasional whole paragraphs of description (e.g. of what a certain alien looks like) are repeated more or less verbatim between books. The same conversations on the same topics - even using the same phrases and jokes - likewise repeated, sometimes even within the same novel.



Little care seems to have been taken with the proofing or editing, and not just in little things (e.g. the use of "they" when referring to a single person.) For example, in one scene, the hero is going by a different name in order to fool the pirates (typically incompetent and without the least tactical sense or knowhow) who are boarding his ship. One crewman uses the hero's actual name, not the proper pseudonym. No one notices. In another scene, the hero and his officers are meeting in a restaurant. A call come in, and suddenly they are sitting in the office 3 floors down as he takes the call. Perhaps one of the most glaring, a fairly significant minor character in the 4th novel is dead at the end of that story and alive at the beginning of the next. This sort of inconsistency isn't uncommon in a novel's early drafts, but it's the kind of thing which decent editing (both by the author and the reviewer) is supposed to catch. Doesn't seem to have happened with this series.


All in all, if you want some boiler-plate sci-fi to read (or listen to) that requires little attention or thought (and, truth to tell, that doesn't reward such attention), this series is tolerable. Might make a good thing to listen to while repainting your living room, for example, or doing something else when most of your attention is elsewhere. But if you want books which have a thought-out and consistent world, realistic or compelling characters, believable antagonists, and a credible military or psychological or scientific setting - or even a series which treats its readers with the basic intellectual courtesy and honesty of having made a reasonable effort to present a credible setting and story -- best to look elsewhere. You won't find it here.


(Note: this review covers the whole series, and is based on listening to the unabridged audiobook version. While the large structural & conceptual flaws & failings of the series are doubtless original with the print version, it's at least possible that some of the specific examples [e.g. use of the wrong name] stem from an error in the audio version. I haven't sat down and compared the two formats.)

The story here is the story of a non-conformist who uses his intellect to achieve his ends despite the closed-mindedness of his superiors; the setting simply happens to be a spaceship on the fringes of a war. It is not, nor has it ever been, military science fiction, despite the setting.

Space opera, yes, as it's an adventure tale set in the far future.

Military SF, no, because although it does use the backdrop of a war and the events of the war to move the story forward, the story is NOT about the war itself, but about one man's disenchantment with his military superiors, his government, and his 'trial by media'.

Granted, it's rather different from Resnick's other works, but this only tells me that the author is willing to try new things and write in new areas. I personally do not like writers who get stuck in a rut and write the same story over and over and over and over and over again ad nauseum until boredom do us part, and Resnick is an author who is willing to make the leap.

Starship: Mutiny is the first in a projected five-book series. I fully expect to see changes in the crew of the Teddy Roosevelt, and in their mission and status over the run of the five books.

And since Mutiny is the first in a five-book series, how can one know how the story is going to turn out in the end? There are still four volumes to go.

And I am looking forward to all of them.

Not great, but really good. Starship: Mutiny was a fast-paced, "what you see is what you get" story. I liked reading it in comparison to the overly descriptive science fiction and fantasy stories.
If you are looking for a story with fleshed out characters, multiple plot twists, and the like, this book is not for you.
If you are looking for something entertaining and worth your time spent, you might enjoy this story.
This was my first Resnick story to read from what seems like an entire library of books. I did not understand Resnick's version of the universe, but it is not hard to catch on and just take it for what it is (plus it helps that there is an appendix).
Try it out, I am probably going to check out Resnick's other books.

Mike Resnick is an author who often writes against the grain. In 'Starship: Mutiny' he goes against the grain of military SF by choosing the classic rag-tag spacship full of misfits, and refusing to make them self-sacrificing heroes in the mold of 'The Dirty Dozen.' Instead he attempts to treat them in the logical fashion that an interstellar military bureaucracy would require for its continued existence.

At the same time, Resnick bridges his realistic fiction with his myth-making. Wilson Cole starts out as an overly practical officer trying to navigate a literal military machine. His practical use and abuse of the news-media naturally leads to his achieving mythic proportions.

While the story arrives at the expected conclusion foreshadowed by its title, there are surprises along the way. The last 50 pages were impossible to put down, and the ending makes me look forward to the next 4 books in the series.

For readers who follow the 'Birthright Universe' the stories promise to bridge the eras between The Republic and The Democracy. In this sense the series is meta-fiction, not about a spaceship and its crew, but about the weight of government and the cost of freedom. What could be more important?

I'm not sure why I rated this even two stars. There is little here to recommend. I love space opera and military sf. I have also served in the Air Force and am currently working for the Army. Clearly, Resnick has little familiarity with the military world. From the beginning, the blatant disregard for how things are done in the military was an irritation that grew stronger the more I read.

Resnick spends little time on describing setting. Very often we have talking heads, and not even that since Resnick doesn't bother to describe his characters very much at all. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm the sort of reader who skims descriptive narrative that goes on for more than a couple of sentences, but still! Give me some idea of where these folks are and what their environment looks like.

As far as the characters go, Resnick gives us little. True, we have pages and pages of the protagonist, Cole, talking to others or even himself. He's a smart a** who's supposedly so brilliant. The other characters seem to be simply foils for Cole to expound to or shoot quips at. Nothing to compel me to read more than a quarter of this book.

The author starts off with a pretty good beginning, then he lost me: it just wasn't very realistic to me. Here is a synopsis of the story in three long sentences:

The good guy has a discipline problem and despite being the most decorated military person ever, is banished to a nowhere post, and will be sentenced to life in prison for insubordination despite saving the day. Meanwhile, the evil first officer now captain literally kills a couple of million people by blowing up a planet and will only be demoted one grade in rank. In the end, our hero is rescued from a maximum security prison by literally walking out, where he then takes over his former space ship with a mutinous crew - all wrapping up the adventure by starting to repaint the ship as a modern day pirate ship where we can now milk out several more books.

There is a lot of good science fiction out there to spend your money on - save your ten bucks on this book on something else.

Fans of military space opera will relish another new Mike Resnick title packed with action and adventure; this revolving around a starship's fight in a galactic war, where its crew is made up of novices and new recruits. A captain's willingness to follow the wrong orders leads Cole to take command of the ship and win a major battle; but despite his success his mutiny cannot be condoned and he is brought to trial on a 'done deal' arrangement. Politics and military might clash - as do personalities - in Starship: Mutiny.

Some of the reviewers here have more patience than I. I can only imagine anyone giving this book ( I won't waste one more second on the rest of this series) a decent rating must have limited experience in READING. Believe me when I say that I am no tech weenie but I need SOME semblance of REASONABLE REALITY in the author's universe. This guy is like the anti-Weber (Weber can be boring with his love of tech) where distance and communications seem irrelevant distractions. While reading this book it struck me that there was no imagination here but plenty of fantasy (one day I am going to be big and strong and I'll show you a thing or two...} of the George McFly type. Clumsy suppositions abound. Editing, etc. L. Pittenger' 2 star review is as good as any here as a warning of what one can expect. If you want this kind of LIGHT military sf that plays light with the laws of logic of the universe and its characters I would suggest the Kris Longknife series. Like I said, I am prepared to suspend the laws of believability as long as the author isn't going to rub my face in it