The Hero (Posleen Wars) 
asked by jrivera on November 23, 2006 9:12 PM
It's a matter of trust. For thousands of years the Darhel, a warrior species conditioned to be incapable of killing, manipulated and controlled the human race. Then the humans threw off their yoke. Now, for the first time, a Darhel has been assigned to the elite Deep Reconnaissance Team commandos. Trust, in a small unit, is vital. And there was no trust to be had on either side. But when the mission encountered an alien device worth more than a king's ransom, it was the humans who betrayed the trust. Now the despised Darhel must race against the team's sniper to prevent the artifact falling into the wrong hands. The Darhel has empathic powers, superhuman strength and the speed of a cheetah. The sniper has years of experience and enormous ability. The sniper can kill. The Darhel cannot. The fate of the galaxy and the human race for the next thousand years rests on the shoulders of a Darhel. The Hero has a thousand faces, but is one of them the face of an elf?
Reviews
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First of all, I just wanted to comment that I am a huge fan of the Polseen universe and Mr. Ringo's body of work. Well, except for this book.
The characterizations were not engaging, the action sequences lacked "snap", the overall plot was rather tiresome and the ending was very disappointing. Actually the ending is horrid. What I did enjoy was learning a bit more about the "Elves" as well as brushing against some other aspects of the Polseen universe and its history.
Mr. Ringo is a skilled storyteller who has brought me countless hours of happy reading. I look forward to what comes out next in the Polseen universe but I have to recommend that people skip this book.
The characterizations were not engaging, the action sequences lacked "snap", the overall plot was rather tiresome and the ending was very disappointing. Actually the ending is horrid. What I did enjoy was learning a bit more about the "Elves" as well as brushing against some other aspects of the Polseen universe and its history.
Mr. Ringo is a skilled storyteller who has brought me countless hours of happy reading. I look forward to what comes out next in the Polseen universe but I have to recommend that people skip this book.
reviewed by benzdrives on November 23, 2006 10:31 PM
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Very disappointing. I only bought it because I found Ringo's 4-volume "trilogy" on the Posleen wars engaging with interesting characters.
This book does not measure up. It starts with lots of clunky expository dialogue, then goes on to a tedious, way too long set up. After 164 pages, after you've followed the tiresomely cliched characters around for a lot of totally irrelevant and uninteresting non-events, when you're wondering for the tenth time if the story is ever going to start and which of these cardboard cut-outs you're supposed to care about (you never come to care about any of them) there's a betrayal (finally, some action!) for what turns out to be a totally uninteresting motive, followed by a long tedious stalk (here we go again) and frustrating out of character behavior of the survivors: A master sniper can't find a wounded guy who's crawled a few meters into the bush? Doesn't even try? When he obviously needs to leave no one alive? And where was the Darhel's vaunted "Sense" while the murder was being planned?
Then we're told Darhel can go a week sans rest without too much trouble but he's so worn out after three days he can't take the opportunity of the bad guy falling asleep to move? He exposes himself to fire to begin some great plan then two pages later is again wondering what to do next?
Don't hold your breath waiting for him to do anything to justify the book's title. You'll be horribly disappointed.
Then we find jarring contradictory details like "the hero" still being tracked several pages after he's discovered and ditched the tracking device. etc. etc. etc...
The final fate of the bad guy is straight "god out of the box". Come on! I won't reveal what it was in case some masochist wants to slog through the long tedium for it but it made me want to hurl the book across the room. Or just hurl.
And the denoument is laughable. Think of the old "Kung Fu" TV serious. "Well done, grasshopper...."
My bet is Ringo had very minority input on this.
Note to Baen: Crap is crap no matter whose name is on it.
This book does not measure up. It starts with lots of clunky expository dialogue, then goes on to a tedious, way too long set up. After 164 pages, after you've followed the tiresomely cliched characters around for a lot of totally irrelevant and uninteresting non-events, when you're wondering for the tenth time if the story is ever going to start and which of these cardboard cut-outs you're supposed to care about (you never come to care about any of them) there's a betrayal (finally, some action!) for what turns out to be a totally uninteresting motive, followed by a long tedious stalk (here we go again) and frustrating out of character behavior of the survivors: A master sniper can't find a wounded guy who's crawled a few meters into the bush? Doesn't even try? When he obviously needs to leave no one alive? And where was the Darhel's vaunted "Sense" while the murder was being planned?
Then we're told Darhel can go a week sans rest without too much trouble but he's so worn out after three days he can't take the opportunity of the bad guy falling asleep to move? He exposes himself to fire to begin some great plan then two pages later is again wondering what to do next?
Don't hold your breath waiting for him to do anything to justify the book's title. You'll be horribly disappointed.
Then we find jarring contradictory details like "the hero" still being tracked several pages after he's discovered and ditched the tracking device. etc. etc. etc...
The final fate of the bad guy is straight "god out of the box". Come on! I won't reveal what it was in case some masochist wants to slog through the long tedium for it but it made me want to hurl the book across the room. Or just hurl.
And the denoument is laughable. Think of the old "Kung Fu" TV serious. "Well done, grasshopper...."
My bet is Ringo had very minority input on this.
Note to Baen: Crap is crap no matter whose name is on it.
reviewed by runningscared on November 27, 2006 2:06 PM
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I liked the book when I expected to love it.
like other's I too am a fan of both Williamson and Ringo, but this is not their best work. I did not consider it a waste of money, but I am glad I bought it as a paperback. If you are looking for something groundbreaking or outside of the normal plot lines, looks somewhere else. For a pleasant waste of an afternoon, you could do a lot worse that this.
like other's I too am a fan of both Williamson and Ringo, but this is not their best work. I did not consider it a waste of money, but I am glad I bought it as a paperback. If you are looking for something groundbreaking or outside of the normal plot lines, looks somewhere else. For a pleasant waste of an afternoon, you could do a lot worse that this.
reviewed by artdealer on November 27, 2006 9:13 PM
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Why was this book writtten? Does Ringo need money? The original Posleen series was fantastic. This and Callys War, they appear to be afterthoughts. Do authors cut and paste? Do they have left over thoughts that they throw together and call it a book?
reviewed by advisor on November 29, 2006 4:34 PM
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I like Ringo's work in the "March To..." series and I liked Williamson's "Freehold", so when I saw they had combined in a new book, I put that on my to-buy list. I waited until the paperback came out, bought it, and happily sat down to read it. Unfortunately, the book didn't live up to my own mental hype.
This book is apparently a continuation of a series involving something known as the Posleen War. Not having read any books involving that before, I went into this book cold, and I am coming out the same way. There is only a cursory description of the variously cultural entities that are at odds with one another, and no real emotional reason given as to why one is supposed to be better than the other. The bad guys seem to to be something called the Blobs, but since that gave me the mental image of a moving scoop of green Jello, I found it hard to work up an interest in them, or to care about them one way or the other.
The basic plot is a group of commandos land on a planet to recon a suspected enemy base, which they do without incident or much dramatic tension. On the way back, they find an alien artifact from an extinct, highly-advanced civilization, that would be worth "billions". This artifact is basically a Hitchcockian "maguffin" - something everyone is pursuing but that really doesn't have any significance to the story. We never really learn in detail what exactly the thing is, what is does, how it works, etc., and in the end it is immaterial. Greed arises, compatriots are killed, and three are left to try to rendezvous with the escape craft, one of whom has the artifact.
Pick any WWII movie and you can place the three remaining stereotyped characters: the psychopathic sniper, the determined outsider, and the loyal "kid". The story centers mainly around Dagger (the sniper) and Tirdal (the alien Darhel) and their mental battle with each other as Dagger pursues Tirdal a la "The Most Dangerous Game", with the character Ferret pursuing them both, trying to figure out what's going on and who to side with. Ferret was actually the most sympathetic character out of the three. Dagger was just a textbook psycho and bully, while Tirdal, who is the hero, is never really emotionally accessible. I knew that I was supposed to care about him but I could only manage a lukewarm interest. Basically this book consists of a geographical tour of whatever planet it is they are on and their hostile encounters with the local fauna, which are giant bugs. Everyone takes potshots at each other, with various wounds accumulating. The one you expect to die first does, the bad guy fails, the hero wins. Tah-dah.
The book left me dissatisfied. It would have worked much better as either a short story or a novella. The novel format was just too long because the action, once the group was narrowed down to just the three characters, was simply repetitive. Except for a few quirks, there was really very little development of Tirdal in the context of why being a Darhel among humans was so culturally odd. I wanted better explanations of the players and the situations. I kept wondering what the point of the whole story was, and I never quite got an answer to that one.
This book is apparently a continuation of a series involving something known as the Posleen War. Not having read any books involving that before, I went into this book cold, and I am coming out the same way. There is only a cursory description of the variously cultural entities that are at odds with one another, and no real emotional reason given as to why one is supposed to be better than the other. The bad guys seem to to be something called the Blobs, but since that gave me the mental image of a moving scoop of green Jello, I found it hard to work up an interest in them, or to care about them one way or the other.
The basic plot is a group of commandos land on a planet to recon a suspected enemy base, which they do without incident or much dramatic tension. On the way back, they find an alien artifact from an extinct, highly-advanced civilization, that would be worth "billions". This artifact is basically a Hitchcockian "maguffin" - something everyone is pursuing but that really doesn't have any significance to the story. We never really learn in detail what exactly the thing is, what is does, how it works, etc., and in the end it is immaterial. Greed arises, compatriots are killed, and three are left to try to rendezvous with the escape craft, one of whom has the artifact.
Pick any WWII movie and you can place the three remaining stereotyped characters: the psychopathic sniper, the determined outsider, and the loyal "kid". The story centers mainly around Dagger (the sniper) and Tirdal (the alien Darhel) and their mental battle with each other as Dagger pursues Tirdal a la "The Most Dangerous Game", with the character Ferret pursuing them both, trying to figure out what's going on and who to side with. Ferret was actually the most sympathetic character out of the three. Dagger was just a textbook psycho and bully, while Tirdal, who is the hero, is never really emotionally accessible. I knew that I was supposed to care about him but I could only manage a lukewarm interest. Basically this book consists of a geographical tour of whatever planet it is they are on and their hostile encounters with the local fauna, which are giant bugs. Everyone takes potshots at each other, with various wounds accumulating. The one you expect to die first does, the bad guy fails, the hero wins. Tah-dah.
The book left me dissatisfied. It would have worked much better as either a short story or a novella. The novel format was just too long because the action, once the group was narrowed down to just the three characters, was simply repetitive. Except for a few quirks, there was really very little development of Tirdal in the context of why being a Darhel among humans was so culturally odd. I wanted better explanations of the players and the situations. I kept wondering what the point of the whole story was, and I never quite got an answer to that one.
reviewed by nutshell on November 29, 2006 6:02 PM