Dan Among Den

• A Talent for War, by Jack McDevitt: This was a pretty good one. Most of McDevitt's tales center around some kind of mystery from the past, often via the mechanism of archaeology, except that it's the past as seen from hundreds or often thousands of years from now. This particular tale surrounded a mystery of a historical nature, of a particularly crucial and popular moment of a defining war that took place a few hundred years before, but it looks like that crucial moment didn't happen the way people think it did. It would be as though today in the US an amateur historian came across evidence that Washington did not cross the Delaware with his troops to attack the Hessian mercenaries working for the British, that something else entirely had happened. So, it's about the mystery itself as well as struggling against everyone who wants to preserve the myth, some because they need its cultural legacy and some to protect the secret of what really happened. Highly recommended
• Post Captain, by Patrick O'Brian: This is the second book in the series that led to the recent Russel Crowe film, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. The story itself is pretty good, but the writing is mediocre at best, IMO. It goes on and on endlessly about the specifics of various sailing issues, and the various bits of dramatic dialog often read more like a laundry list than Shakespeare. And yet, the characters themselves are fairly interesting, and the backdrop and plot and fairly engaging. It's just that it can be a bit painful to read through. As an interesting side note, after reading a couple of these, I am almost positive that this is the origin for David Weber's Honor Harrinton series. The parallels in character and setting are uncanny. I can almost see Weber reading through the first few of these, thinking "Hey, I could do the same thing in SF and make a mint!". At least Weber waited until about book 5 or 6 before the writing quality went south.
• Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk: I suppose I should say something like "the first rule of reading Fight Club is that you do not talk about reading Fight Club," but I won't. This is the same story as the movie, and the book came first. Now, normally when that kind of thing happens everyone says, "Oh, but the book was so much better." In this case, not. The book wasn't bad or anything. In fact, it was very much the same story as the movie, which is very rare considering book movies are often like sausage. Rather, I just thought that the movie was a much better telling of the story.
• Trading in Danger, by Elizabeth Moon: This was billed as a good story for folks who liked the above-mentioned Honor Harrington series. There's some truth to that in that this is also a space opera with a strong, young female lead. Moon delivered on characters, plot, and quality of writing. My only regret in the series is that much like her other SF series (in the Familias universe), the lead character is not an ordinary person. Instead, they are always the son or daughter of privelage, e.g. daughter of a prime minister, or the one who manages the family fortune, etc. Even her swag at the nobody from a backwater planet turns out to be the daughter of one of the ten most important people on her planet. In this book, the lead character is another child of privelage. Her father is the CFO of a major shipping firm, and her uncle is the CEO. It's all family owned, so it's not like they can even be fired. Now, don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the book, and Moon is an excellent writer, but just once I'd like to see her focus on some scrappy underdog, a penniless nobody who climbs her way up.
• Marque and Reprisal, by Elizabeth Moon: Same series, second book. The plot thickens, and some of the real bad guys emerge, and we get a taste of where this is going in the third book. The family fortune is dashed, but it's still a bunch of rich folk (or formerly rich folk) struggling to regain and enhance the family portfolio.

Other Friday Fivers can be found at the used book store here.