Customer Reviews

The Sword (The Raj Whitehall Series: The General, Book 5)

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

 

 

Mediocre ending to outstanding series. Every other book in this series I would give 5 stars to. This one was not too bad as a story, but as the climax of a 5 part series it was flat. It had essentially the same basic plot as the others (go to enemy, overcome obstacles, make brilliant tactical move, gain victory). The overcoming of the major problems and enemies the reader has been following for the entire series (untrusting ruler, corrupt and evil chancellor) are summed up with a few sentences at the end. What made this series outstanding is its combination of realistic warfare, politics, character development, history, and fantasy. The Sword essentially leaves out the politics and character development. As a next to last book in a series, The Sword would be fine, but it fails to wrap up the overall story in a satisfactory manner. Overall, however, The General is a must-read series for any military or SF fiction fan, and enjoyable for nearly everyone else.

I recently came upon the Raj Whitehall series - thanks to Amazon suggesting that I might like it based on prior purchases. Love that algorythm!

Set in a distant future, but also in a post-apocolypse era, the cunning theory is that a lone remaining computer on an out-of-the-way world has determined that Raj Whitehall, a young soldier with leadrship promise, is just the guy to restore unity to the world -and ultimately to humanity across the stars.

If you know Stirling & Drake, you know they are tops in military SF, with fast-paced battles, and a keen sense of what is required to put an effective fighting force into the field. In this series, they cunningly adapt stories of Alexander the Great, American Civil War battles (and unless I miss my guess) one or two from WWII. But what makes this series special is the much better than usual character growth and complexity of ideas - especially those between freedom and statism, democracy vs. feudalism, tribalism vs. humanism.

Highly recommended. Those of us who are "type A" should read them in order (although not strictly necessary). I will give no more details, other than to say this this book provides a very satisfying conclusion to the series of 5 (which then has grown subsequently in a slightly altered sense with a follow-up series which is a bit less enjoyable.)

This is the standard by which I judge all military fiction. I have never found another that was it's equal. Even when the same authors got together again for books 6 and 7 (which I have reviewed separately) they couldn't recreate the magic of this series.

THE GENERAL series is about a fallen interstellar society which has climbed it's way back up to the technological level of the American Civil War. The hero, Raj Whitehall, has to reunite the planet in order to reach the stars again some day. This involves a lot of fighting and empire building. What gives Raj his edge is the pre-fall computer he has linked with that can see through his eyes.

This series has outstanding character development, a solid and well thought out overall plot line, and good story resolution in each book. The two things that really make the series the top of its genre are the interaction between the computer and the hero, and the realism of the situation. The interaction is a delicate balance that the authors perform magically. If the computer (Center) contributes too much, then the hero has too much of an edge, he doesn't have to try, and the story becomes boring. Without the computer, the hero is just this god like superhuman character that can do no wrong. The computer assistance makes Raj identifiable to the reader, even after he overcomes overwhelming odds to defeat the enemy. The realism comes from the fact that Raj is based on the life of a real person. The whole story is very similar to the story of Byzantine General Belisarius who conquered most of the Mediterranean world for his Emperor after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. That makes it very believable. The characters are very real. Their actions really happened a millenium and a half ago.

This is a must read for any fan of military fiction or empire building.

Okay I read the other review and had to add my opinion.

I loved the series, it's from stem the stern the best series I've read this year.

The other guy had a point about how it'd be cooler if the technology had continued to advance with centers assistance (david, s.m.? can you hear us?)

But the fact is that the story is compelling, the characters well written and frankly is just a really fun read from stem to stern my biggest complaint is that the series is ended already.

I'd love to see more books, with more interesting technological advancement using centers resources. I'd like to see what popinlach and raj make in a few years...and say a colony rebellion...

but the books rocked. all of them.. the "sequel" the choson, was only about 75% as good but still worth reading...

A book series should be so fast paced and unpredictable that the reader doesn't have the time to pause and work out the plot - they should be absorbed in reading and the plot should always be so unique as to give them doubt about the final outcome. The first two books in the series hooked me, but then innovation ceased and by the fourth book I was telling myself, "Go ahead and kill of Barholm and put Poplanich on the throne and get it over with, will you!" The last book was no surprise. Even the innovation of tricking the Colonists into overextending their supply lines and starving themselves into submission was dull. (For a desert-wise professional army, the Colonist sure acted stupid).

What got me the most was that technical innovation ceased. Given the resources of Center it should have blossomed. Just using the technology of the 1870s to 1890s, I was hoping to see field rockets on firing troughs like those used in the Zulu wars (and carried by mule-dogs), real Gatling guns (not the "splat guns" which offered too little firepower for their size), mountain guns, hydropneumatic recoil on artillery, bolt-action rifles (shooting 11-mm black powder cartridges, like the .45-70 Hotchkiss the USA Army tested or the tube-magazine Mauser 11-mm), iron clad monitors, heavy artillery (please lay off the 75s), sniper rifles (mentioned but not used). Then you might add in smokeless powders invented around 1886 and a deluge of other little ideas. Balloons, for example, and telegraphs.

Even the lack of innovation didn't surprise me- the authors are hyped as military experts who strive for accuracy, yet their books tend to lack technical accuracy. In one story in the Riverworld series, one of them featured a Union soldier with a fourteen shot Henry rifle (a Henry rifle has a 15 shot magazine, plus room for one in the spout). In The General series the 75's shoot 10-kilo' shells (22 pounds - more suited for 90-mm howitzers) while a typical 75-mm would actually only fire a 7-kilogram shell (15.4 lb). For a high-velocity weapon, the 75' in the book has a very short range, one that even the lack of elevation cannot wish away - elevation is just a matter of jacking the wheels up, at which point 12,000 meters would easily be achieved. The pom-pom shell fluctuates from quarter kilo' (.55 lb) to 1-pound (.45 kilograms). The Skinner's are super-barbarians shooting 15-mm rifles with far too much accuracy; the 15-mm caliber would cause severe logistics problems, reducing ammunition supplies drastically and against humans having no real advantage over .45-caliber weapons. Besides resulting in a very low rate of fire.

But, compared to the other books written by "military" experts, the beginning of the series is a fairly good read. By the end, though, it begins to get boring due to a lack of change in plot and result.

About 1/3 of the way through this book, the authors depart from the historical model they have so carefully followed, and start skipping though time much more quickly, as if anxious to be done with the series. Also, perhaps a quarter of the text is flashbacks that are taken word-for-word from previous volumes in the series. This is really a bit much. The final solution is obvious, and if it is possible at this point, why wasn't it possible 2-3 books ago? This is a poor conclusion to the series, IMO.