Sequel news!

[quote="Bulldogger"]

<SNIP>
Perhaps humans meet other developing races and planet and form a federation of planets (sorry for the Star Trek terminology - but it fits too well as a descriptive noun).

<SNIP>

Reading this I just thought, in the future, if we ever meet friendly alien species and enter an alliance/union/etc etc, the hoops that human politicians will just through to avoid calling it a Federation (unless they are fans of 20th Century science fiction of course, in which case they will be going though the hoops in the other direction)

Cant believe so many people are whinning about this! It was a GREAT book and LOTS of fun to read. I cant wait for the next one...... JUST like with the last Safehold book when its announced I will pre buy in hard back. Totally STOKED there is going to be another. RIGHT ON!!

Back in May dwatts13 pretty much summed it up for me. After the years of reading Mr. Weber's work and appreciating his talent for developing characters, science (with sometimes long-winded setup scenes ) I found this book to be a pretty good read/story until Vlad showed up.

I kept waiting for the answer to how the base camps were being destroyed but when I finally found out it was a tremendous disappointment! With Weber's abilities I was pretty much dumb-founded as to why he would turn to such a SILLY notion when so many possibilities were available ... humans taking advantage of the "educators" to create a tide-turning weapon, stealing shuttles and attacking the space ships, etc.

I am sad to say this sequel is the first of Mr. Weber's books I do NOT look forward to reading and until I see more of his past talents put to the pen, it diminishes his future work in my eyes.

I find myself looking forward to this book with more antipathy than anticipation. First, a little background. Five years ago, I lost my sight. Prior to this, I was involved with many fanbased activities, and as such, I knew details before publication. I am now reduced to audiobooks for my reading. To surf the web, I must take time away from my wife's activities and although we share many hobbies, including reading, this can be a good way to get on her nerves. Basically, I came at this book blind in more ways than one. As my wife is fond of saying, the clues were there but surely, he ain't gonna do that. I do not object to the ending of this book due to content; rather, I find its lack of craft appalling. The proposed sequel will be the first of Weber's books not on my "read before I go to sleep" playlist in 20 years. Let us hope that Out of the Darkness remains an aberration and is not a side effect of Mr. Weber's recent change in the creative process.

Well, I know a lot of people didn't and/or don't like Out of the Dark because if the vampire denouement. But I've just started re-reading it (again, about the 4th time) and I still love it, though a few extra chapters at the end innstead of the rushed-seeming final would have been good to have.

It seems to me that DW took the standard 'what-if' idea and applied it to the vampire legends as what if they were true. Frankly, I find it no more unbelievable the the usual 'alien invasion' stories that depend on either a lone genius cooking up a wonder weapon in his home workshop garage or an unbelievable overlooked vulnerability in the aliens' ships or their actual bodies. As we all know,every Death Star has an open route to its reactor (need I say what I'm mentioning here) and every alien race is struck down by the common cold (same comment). Now_those_ are what I call unbelievable.

Cheers

John

dwatts13 wrote:I won't be reading this one, thank you. I like my science fiction to be SCIENCE fiction. I don't care how far you have to stretch the edges to make it fit, but give a science explanation. Having a twilight dawn experience to finish (up to that point) an outstanding book about cultural disconnects and asymetric warfare really just ruined the whole experience. I did NOT find the paperback cover to be enlightening enough and because of my fondness for Mr Weber's science fiction - I didn't read the back anyway until in my confusion at the appearance of a fantasy character I did a quick check. I have no problem with reading fantasy and fantasy characters, but let's keep the genres separate. There were (in the scope of the book) at least a half dozen or more possible science fiction routes that could have been taken to finish this book, but why Mr Weber would imagine that a reader that has identified with the struggles and accomplishments of multiple military characters to defend humanity would want a "vampire?" to suddenly be mankinds salvation from the aliens is just beyond me. As others have written the biggest disappointment is the "cute" way that he purposely sprang the "surprise" ending on the readers without backstory or development aka Mr Shyamalan. In this I am showing my regard for Mr Weber as I don't believe that he would use such a ploy to finish a story he was "stuck" on just to satisfy a deadline with a publisher.
In the end though the story was great until Vlad the Impaler becomes the solution and then it stunk, overall ruined the whole storyline and guaranteed itself on my do not read list for further developments.

John Prigent wrote:It seems to me that DW took the standard 'what-if' idea and applied it to the vampire legends as what if they were true. Frankly, I find it no more unbelievable the the usual 'alien invasion' stories that depend on either a lone genius cooking up a wonder weapon in his home workshop garage or an unbelievable overlooked vulnerability in the aliens' ships or their actual bodies. As we all know,every Death Star has an open route to its reactor (need I say what I'm mentioning here) and every alien race is struck down by the common cold (same comment). Now_those_ are what I call unbelievable.

The Death Star was set up by the plot - the reason Leia was captured, and the reason for the Imperial search for the droids was that the Rebels had got their hands on the Death Star plans, and could analyse them for weaknesses. Having got the plans to the Rebel base, the assault on the Death Star was the logical consequence. The nature of the weakness was largely irrelevant - the story logic just required that it be something that Luke could take advantage of.

The problem I have with Out of the Dark is not that vampires save the day - it's that it's not set up - the story is about humanity refusing to give up, and demonstrating why you don't poke a wasps' nest. Then when the invaders get ready to demonstrate why wasps never win in the end, suddenly it turns out that the Central European guerillas who'd been casually defeating enemy forces offstage (while the viewpoint characters casually defeat enemy forces onstage) were actually incredibly powerful supernatural beings who then win the war without breaking a sweat, and without having to be asked. The day isn't saved by the characters we've been following, but by a background character deciding to pull out the magic wand he had all along and solve all the main characters' problems.

The title and the ending belong to one book, while the bulk of the narrative belongs to a different book. It's as though The Apocalypse Troll ended not with Ludmilla pulling off a quick-draw, but with a fighter squadron from her future dropping out of hyper overhead (after their own Takeshita Translation) and nailing the Troll for them. Or if A New Hope ended with Luke being shot down and the guy from the Mos Eisley Cantina whose arm got cut off flying in and blowing the Death Star up with a shot from long range...

For all who dislike Vlad. Why do you consider it "mere" fantasy? Granted Vampires are mythic creatures for Terra, but then so is the entire Hegemony. Intelligent herbivores? The introduction of Vlad, as a very advanced Terran lifeform, is really not that extreme of an event. No more so, it would seem, than Agincort being observed by aliens. The question that needs scrutinized is, "Is Vlad Terran?" My opinion of this is that it seems to be a more rounded concept that HonorVerse. I tired of all the Human machinations. Except they occur on other planets they could equally be set on Earth itself. There are to many Homo Stupidian elements.

BruceW wrote:For all who dislike Vlad. Why do you consider it "mere" fantasy? Granted Vampires are mythic creatures for Terra, but then so is the entire Hegemony. Intelligent herbivores? The introduction of Vlad, as a very advanced Terran lifeform, is really not that extreme of an event. No more so, it would seem, than Agincort being observed by aliens. The question that needs scrutinized is, "Is Vlad Terran?" My opinion of this is that it seems to be a more rounded concept that HonorVerse. I tired of all the Human machinations. Except they occur on other planets they could equally be set on Earth itself. There are to many Homo Stupidian elements.

My problem is not with the "vampires are real" (though I do pause to wonder what happened to the werewolves, bogeymen, fair folk, pukas, ghouls, mummies, etc, etc, etc that also go bump in the night) but with the way it's thrown in at the last minute. If you read the book, and stop just before the vampires come out of the shadows and start killing everyone, by the rules of the universe as established up to that point, humanity is about to get wiped out - we'd have won the battle but lost the war. Instead of letting the inevitable play out, guess what? The Carpathian Commandos were holding back and holding out on the reader - they're actually super-powered creatures of the night who just casually wipe out the invaders.

Nothing about the text says that this is a setting where vampires are real, nor explains their strengths and more strengths (these vampires don't seem to come with weaknesses) until after they've saved the day.

You could just as well have a farm-boy serving in one of the resistance units, who shrugs, takes off his glasses, and dresses up in red and blue with a big yellow letter on his chest, breathes in the poison gas then collects all the invaders and dumps them on Easter Island without any of their technology.

Or have the humans survive the alien poison gas by everyone holding their breath for 6 months. Turns out that humans in this world can do that.

Like I say, it's not the presence of real-live vampires that I don't like; it's the fact they're not established before they're used to magically solve everything.

All I can say is that I spotted the likely salvation f Earth about halfway through my first read of the book. There are plenty of giveaway lines that point to classical vampires. That's 'classical' not Bram Stoker's version.
Cheers
John

rmsgrey wrote:

BruceW wrote:For all who dislike Vlad. Why do you consider it "mere" fantasy? Granted Vampires are mythic creatures for Terra, but then so is the entire Hegemony. Intelligent herbivores? The introduction of Vlad, as a very advanced Terran lifeform, is really not that extreme of an event. No more so, it would seem, than Agincort being observed by aliens. The question that needs scrutinized is, "Is Vlad Terran?" My opinion of this is that it seems to be a more rounded concept that HonorVerse. I tired of all the Human machinations. Except they occur on other planets they could equally be set on Earth itself. There are to many Homo Stupidian elements.

My problem is not with the "vampires are real" (though I do pause to wonder what happened to the werewolves, bogeymen, fair folk, pukas, ghouls, mummies, etc, etc, etc that also go bump in the night) but with the way it's thrown in at the last minute. If you read the book, and stop just before the vampires come out of the shadows and start killing everyone, by the rules of the universe as established up to that point, humanity is about to get wiped out - we'd have won the battle but lost the war. Instead of letting the inevitable play out, guess what? The Carpathian Commandos were holding back and holding out on the reader - they're actually super-powered creatures of the night who just casually wipe out the invaders.

Nothing about the text says that this is a setting where vampires are real, nor explains their strengths and more strengths (these vampires don't seem to come with weaknesses) until after they've saved the day.

You could just as well have a farm-boy serving in one of the resistance units, who shrugs, takes off his glasses, and dresses up in red and blue with a big yellow letter on his chest, breathes in the poison gas then collects all the invaders and dumps them on Easter Island without any of their technology.

Or have the humans survive the alien poison gas by everyone holding their breath for 6 months. Turns out that humans in this world can do that.

Like I say, it's not the presence of real-live vampires that I don't like; it's the fact they're not established before they're used to magically solve everything.

All I can say is that I spotted the likely salvation f Earth about halfway through my first read of the book. There are plenty of giveaway lines that point to classical vampires. That's 'classical' not Bram Stoker's version.
Cheers
John

I'll agree with John on this. I was also suspecting vampires at that same point he did. I read a lot of fantasy as well, so the hints were fairly obvious to me.