A Thousand Words
I used to read quite a bit for pleasure, typically devouring at least two books a week. Those days have long since passed me by. It’s the usual story. Life is comprised of a whole lot of time management juggling, and what you end up doing with your time tends to fluctuate; sometimes even on a daily basis.
Recently I decided to try playing catch up with the many unread books I have around the house so I can finally get around to picking up some recent titles that have piqued my interest, without feeling like I’m just adding to that massive pile of laziness. I don’t expect to be back in my prime—currently I’m just reading during lunch—but it’s still better than before.
The first book I dusted off was David Weber’s At All Cost. I had forgotten how goofy the dust jacket art was. Behold:
What were they thinking? David Weber is a military sci-fi author. At All Cost is part of his Honorverse series, which is basically a sci-fi version of Horatio Hornblower with a chick as Horatio. The Star Kingdom are the Brits, the Havenites the evil frogs, and the Sollies are…I don’t know. Can’t think of what 19th century power they would represent. Anyway, it’s a fantastic series and probably easily my favorite military sci-fi series.
One thing that Weber excels at are exciting battle scenes. Lots of really groovy starship on starship action.
Look back at the cover. Does that really promise exciting dreadnoughts hammering away at each other in the freezing cold of space? Walking by the shelf at your local Barnes and Noble, would you think it had anything to do with military sci-fi? Or does it look like something that should have the Oprah book club logo on it?
What were they thinking?
Scott,
I agree with you one hundred percent. Baen must have said OK Honor has a baby so maybe you can work that into the cover. The Battle of Manticore is going on in the background I would presume but that is one weird holy family portrait.
I still love the book and series. Yes it’s got too much talk talk politics, domesticity and other tangential stuff, but I’ve stuck through the whole series and enjoyed it. The climactic battle at the end is awesome and I won’t spoil it. As always it’s dangerous to be around Honor. I wish he’d write the next one already. Although, I bet we’ll see it before we see Martin’s next book.
Comment by Vic Davis — 2/26/2008 @ 2:36 pm
And you know what, normally I’m not a fan of when a publisher sticks a piece of cover art on that has nothing to do with the contents, but in this case I think I would have preferred them to go that route.
Oooh, climactic battles are always good. Nice to know that he hasn’t come out with the next one yet. I hadn’t checked up to see if he had, and wondered if I would have to add to my current queue.
I’m not taking you up on that bet. The frustrating thing is Martin has put out like two or three *other* books in the meantime. What’s going to be really bad is if Jordan, a dead man, gets his next novel out first.
Comment by Scott — 2/27/2008 @ 9:18 pm