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Northworld Trilogy Mass Market Paperback – March 1, 1999
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- Print length791 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBaen
- Publication dateMarch 1, 1999
- Dimensions4.19 x 1.3 x 6.75 inches
- ISBN-109780671577872
- ISBN-13978-0671577872
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Editorial Reviews
Review
-- The SFRA Newsletter
From the Back Cover
Commissioner Hansen had a mind that saw the shortest path to each task's completion and a ruthless determination to do what the task required. The cost -- to himself and whoever happened to be in the way -- didn't matter. Hanson's Special Units had kept his planet safe from the most sophisticated and violent criminals in the galaxy. Now Hansen was being sent to penetrate a spacetime enigma which had made gods or demons of the first humans to discover it. He would succeed or die.
Northworld: a place of slashing violence and mystic transformation
Northworld: a place of treachery and dazzling beauty
Northworld: a place of honor, of faith, and of love.
Hansen's iron will and strong arm confront godlike power and godlike cunning while a galaxy trembles for the outcome. And if Hansen dies -- he will not die alone!
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : 0671577875
- Publisher : Baen (March 1, 1999)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 791 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780671577872
- ISBN-13 : 978-0671577872
- Item Weight : 12.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.19 x 1.3 x 6.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,974,004 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5,777 in Hard Science Fiction (Books)
- #13,966 in Women's Domestic Life Fiction
- #14,945 in War Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

The Army took David Drake from Duke Law School and sent him on a motorized tour of Viet Nam and Cambodia with the 11th Cav, the Blackhorse. He learned new skills, saw interesting sights, and met exotic people who hadn't run fast enough to get away.
Dave returned to become Chapel Hill's Assistant Town Attorney and to try to put his life back together through fiction making sense of his Army experiences.
Dave describes war from where he saw it: the loader's hatch of a tank in Cambodia. His military experience, combined with his formal education in history and Latin, has made him one of the foremost writers of realistic action SF and fantasy. His bestselling Hammer's Slammers series is credited with creating the genre of modern Military SF. He often wishes he had a less interesting background.
Dave lives with his family in rural North Carolina.
Customer reviews
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Top reviews from the United States
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This was the first time I had read anything by David Drake. There's a clear separation between him and the self-published authors on the Kindle website. Very imaginative, good story pacing, good characters, and solid writing with enough depth and detail to immerse the reader. I'm not sure if his other works are any better, and I suspect they are, but this kind of limited my interest.
The stories just bounce around too much without a whole lot of cohesion. I had the sense Drake was more interested in drawing parallels with Norse Myth than focusing on a well developed story. Characters that received a decent amount of air time in the first novel were barely mentioned, if at all, in the remainder of the trilogy. There were no common threads that really tied the three novels together. Each one was more or less self-contained, but I was expecting more. Romance was just strange, as a character who played a very minor role in the first book was suddenly revealed as a major romantic interest of the main character in the rest? Huh? It was as if the author intended more but changed his mind. That logical consistency doesn't work in a trilogy like this and just struck me as intellectually lazy. I also found the world concept a bit difficult to understand as well as some of the plot motivations, except, again, just as a tool for Drake to match up with certain Nordic mythological themes. While that was interesting in its own right (and I do think Drake is a talented author), it really minimize the impact of his stories.
Finally, after three novels with essentially the same exact thing (people fighting each other in battlesuits with lots of gore while the gods sit around and watch and do - something? - except for the main character), it just got really stale. All in all, this was a good mindless read to occupy your time in between searching for better series or authors.
This book has hidden depths.
Drake's writing is fast-paced, direct, and his observations on the human condition are incisive and to the point. His is a military, goal oriented approach, and that really works for his writing. His action descriptions might go on longer than some people like; however the detail is necessary so you understand the twist he's going to perform to let his character win a situation.
There's not a little deus ex machine in this book but since it's used to put a character in an untenable position as often as it's used to get the character out, perhaps that balances. Possibly it's forgivable, too, because these are stories about Gods, godlike powers, and (semi) divine intervention.
In his Afterwords, Drake explains how the plots are derived from Norse mythology. That's interesting, but if you don't care it doesn't distract from the writing. (It's a fascinating way to derive a story; his Cross The Stars is derived from The Odyssey.)
If you like military science fiction, this book is worth your time.
Top reviews from other countries
But in any case, the sheer pace and excitement of the writing didn't leave me much opportunity for ruminating on the background - that only came in retrospect. Drake is one of the foremost writers of military SF, and these books show his talents in full flow. The battle scenes are many, from individual combat to massed battles, and involve a variety of exotic weaponry - but they focus on the warriors themselves, not on the hardware. The stories are cleverly structured, and Drake uses the background of multiple linked worlds where 'duration' is not always a relevant concept to show his main characters following different adventures apparently at the same time. Hard to describe, but he pulls it off very well, and I loved the way he resolved and integrated the different strands.
The characters themselves are well developed, complex and believable, even when doing some unbelievable things. But then, some of them are gods - or, more accurately, human beings with god-like powers. The result of that tension between human nature and unlimited capability is the intriguing and profound underlay beneath the stories. But you don't have to go there. Just enjoy the action.
The author makes great play of the legitimacy of the story based upon Norse/Icelandic sagas but little of that grounding is evident. If he'd not said, nobody would have noticed.
The introduction of Nils Hansen, the protagonist was good. With little gap the reader is transported with Hansen into what seems an almost subuniverse held together by the Matrix and which contains eight worlds created by the survivors of Earth expeditions sent to explore that part of space and who themselves were made into gods.
Hansen is a warrior fighting endless battles with a mix of weariness and rage. The battles, are well-told, warts and all affairs. He's able to move between the worlds at will but his reason for so doing, or not, isn't given. He too has godlike powers but these are seldom used.
As others have noted the other characters are not very well drawn (maybe Sparrow is more real than the others) and by the end one has learned almost nothing about anyone or anything.
The story itself simply stops, without any form of conclusion. It's not even a hanging ending - it just stops. Disappointing.
All this notwithstanding it was quite a good read and the battlesuits are novel.




