Thank you, Mr Weber.

Uroboros wrote:I hate to be the sole dissenting opinion, but I have to disagree. While overall, I enjoyed much of the book, I have to say that the first half of the book felt out of character to Weber's writing style. It felt, in many cases, like a series of first-drafts roughly shoved together in semi-order.

There's a couple of subplots that did not seem to go anywhere, and there's one pair of scenes, while induvidually well-written, felt very deus ex-ish. Both Cachet and Zilwicki felt unusually out-of-character during the first few scenes they were in, and I feel like it could have used a lot more time for revising and editing.

That being said, it is like someone else entirely wrote the second half of the book. I enjoyed it immensely, and after getting Cachet and Zilwicki to Mesa, I had trouble putting down the book.

While I feel that the good outweighed the bad, I feel that is was just barely. I think it was an okay showing, and with a few more months with the editors, it could have been a lot better.

I think the first half was deliberately written that way to prepare the way for the second half. It contains several scenes taken either directly from earlier books, or relating directly to scenes in earlier books. Mr Weber has done that before, though not to such an extent. But then again, I don't even want to think about how many trees died to print a single paper copy of the book.

Still, it's a matter of personal taste, and overall, I definitely think this was the best ever in the series.

The character who teleports across the galaxy from chapter to chapter is just a lack of editing. It's not my favorite book, but it's not my least favorite either.

kzt wrote:The character who teleports across the galaxy from chapter to chapter is just a lack of editing. It's not my favorite book, but it's not my least favorite either.

You're correct on the editing point. Eric initially structured the first part of the book based on a misunderstanding of the transit times involved, particularly for Michelle coming in from the Talbott Quadrant. When I realized we had a problem there, chapters started getting ripped apart and put back together in a completely different order, and that happened several times, not just once. So we had scenes which were moved earlier and later than they were originally sequenced, and that ended up with more than one character in two star systems at once, actually. There were a lot of reasons the book got a very late state and we were up against a hard release deadline, so we were sort of editing on the fly and none of us caught the continuity error.

runsforcelery wrote:

kzt wrote:The character who teleports across the galaxy from chapter to chapter is just a lack of editing. It's not my favorite book, but it's not my least favorite either.

You're correct on the editing point. Eric initially structured the first part of the book based on a misunderstanding of the transit times involved, particularly for Michelle coming in from the Talbott Quadrant. When I realized we had a problem there, chapters started getting ripped apart and put back together in a completely different order, and that happened several times, not just once. So we had scenes which were moved earlier and later than they were originally sequenced, and that ended up with more than one character in two star systems at once, actually. There were a lot of reasons the book got a very late state and we were up against a hard release deadline, so we were sort of editing on the fly and none of us caught the continuity error.

I figured it was something like that. I suspect if you had another month for editing, it would have been much, much cleaner. As I said, I loved the second half. If your next book is anything like it, I'll be buying the hardbacks.

hey Urobors - you're not the only disenting voice any more.

And I almost hated CoG - it is another Flint Fiasco special far as I'm concerned.
Don't take it wrongly, I like the chharacters, but god almighty the sheer amount of handwaving, DeM and forced pacing and simple BAD spyfiction is near nausiating to me.
Mind, I feel that way about all spook duo books.

I realy don't know where it went wrong since "from the highlands" is a masterpeace, and "fanatic" close to being one.

yannosh wrote:I realy don't know where it went wrong since "from the highlands" is a masterpeace, and "fanatic" close to being one.

Except, y'know, for the Havenite intelligence agents who don't know what dollars are despite their principal enemy calling their currency that ...

(yeah, it was a joke, but it bugs me for some reason)

Hi Drothgery,

Yup, there was a lot of that in FtH, and CoS etc, though CoG had less as I recall.

I enjoyed the early new scenes very much, including Ruth and the newsies gawking speechless at the 'footage' of Victor shooting the scrags along with the whole diversion discussion etc.

Granted the timeline got twisted up, but which character specifically teleported?

I remember looking for something off, bur kept getting distracted by another good part.

L

drothgery wrote:

yannosh wrote:I realy don't know where it went wrong since "from the highlands" is a masterpeace, and "fanatic" close to being one.

Except, y'know, for the Havenite intelligence agents who don't know what dollars are despite their principal enemy calling their currency that ...

(yeah, it was a joke, but it bugs me for some reason)

runsforcelery wrote:

kzt wrote:The character who teleports across the galaxy from chapter to chapter is just a lack of editing. It's not my favorite book, but it's not my least favorite either.

You're correct on the editing point. Eric initially structured the first part of the book based on a misunderstanding of the transit times involved, particularly for Michelle coming in from the Talbott Quadrant. When I realized we had a problem there, chapters started getting ripped apart and put back together in a completely different order, and that happened several times, not just once. So we had scenes which were moved earlier and later than they were originally sequenced, and that ended up with more than one character in two star systems at once, actually. There were a lot of reasons the book got a very late state and we were up against a hard release deadline, so we were sort of editing on the fly and none of us caught the continuity error.

Mr Weber, really. One major continuity error in how many books? Close to two dozen by now? I mean, really? How dare you and Mr Flint DO that to us?

Okay, I do hope you realize that I'm being sarcastic here. The truth is that you've been awfully good about avoiding that kind of thing - certainly much more so than a lot of other major sci-fi authors I could mention. Yours and Mr Flint's attention to detail is virtually legendary...

So I wouldn't pay too much attention to the moaners and groaners out there, if I was you. In my honest opinion, they do it because that's what they do, not because there really is anything to gripe about.

Cauldron is an awesome book, and anyone who differs from me can go stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

hanuman wrote:Cauldron is an awesome book, and anyone who differs from me can go stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

This is a directly antagonistic opinion, and it isn't needed at all.

What the book suffered from was a distinct lack of editing. It's evident not really by the continuity errors, nor the teleporting character, but the spelling and grammar errors. If I am remembering correctly, there was even a superimposed sentence somewhere in there as well.

It also felt like first-draft writing for much of the first half, particularly the Cachet/Anton scenes. It took until they arrived on Mesa to actually feel that Cachet and Zilwicki were actually themselves, and not a Post Diaspora version of the Hecklers from the Muppet Show.

However, the end half of the book is very tight. I enjoyed pretty much every bit of it, and I think the end of the book is one of, if not the, best I've seen written from him up until this point. Now, unless we want Baen thinking it's peachy to put out half-finished products, and we, as consumers, will just buy it blindly, we should stand by our induvidual rights as customers and address what we see as issues so they don't crop up again.

I'm terrible at spelling and grammer, so I ignore spelling errors and typos unless they are jarring. However, you are right, these are a Baen issue. These are supposed to be caught by copy editing, if they are not not caught by the writers. But across the entire book industry it seems copy editing has gotten pretty bad.