In Fury Born

I don’t read/listen to a whole lot of standalone books. I’m big on huge series with book after book of content. However, seeing as I’m also a massive David Weber fan, I thought I’d give In Fury Born a go, and sweet baby Jebus, that man can write a books.

Firstly, if you are at all familiar with Weber’s other works and liked them, you will absolutely like this book. Some authors just have a voice all their own, and even had I not known who the author was, within a very short time I could have picked the magnificent culprit out of any line-up of mischievous military sci-fi authors that you threw at me. Besides his amazing portrayal of characters, the staunch sense of duty that he works into all of his prose, and his love of space monarchies ruled by just and honourable royalty, there are a few turns of phrase that I’ve never heard outside of one of Weber’s books, like reference to buying beachside property at the bottom of the ocean. This book feels exactly like reading one of the Honourverse books if someone had gone back in time and stepped on the proverbial butterfly, causing all of human history to change. So, I’d better get to the story.

In Fury Born follows the adventure of one Alicia DeVries as she joins up with the marines; the imperial marine core of the human empire that is. We are once again graced with a stellar monarchy, and we are once again shown such a government in the absolutely best of lights, with royals, lords, and knights being the best bastion against the scheming politicians and greedy corporations. I loved this theme in the Honourverse and I love it here. Duty and honour are always the core principles of a Weber book, and they are one of the few themes that will elicit a genuine emotional response from me these days after years and years of absorbing just about every type of epic fiction I can get my grubby little hands on. Where the Honourverse concentrated on space combat, here we are treated to the ground combat of the future. Now this is something that isn’t always done well. If you’re establishing a universe of hard sci-fi with real world physics and technology playing its part, then ground combat as we currently understand it can become a bit tricky. You need to know what you’re talking about to deliver a viable offering to we gods that are the hard sci-fi junkies, but just as he did with the Honourverse, Weber has done so again here. Armoured combat suits, copious amounts of drones, and plasma weapons that can level a building with one shot. Every weapon and tactic that we are presented with is used in its most practical and pragmatic way. No glaring logic holes that I could really notice. To those not so interested in this sort of thing, that may not be a big deal, but to a nerd like me, this is incredibly important in building and maintaining a fictional universe. And Weber does so with class.

This novel is very much a story of two halves. The entire first half appears to just be a set-up to the main event, said event being the one plastered all over the blurbs and summaries I’ve found online. I found this weird, because things turn a little sideways when the second act gets going. Something entirely out of the box occurs which should have, and did slightly, require a fairly large suspension of disbelief shift when usually such things are introduced early on in a story so that the universe can grow around such oddities organically and they don’t seem so alien. Imagine yourself happily watching a Terminator film when halfway through Sara Connor turns around and says ‘oh by the way, I’m also a witch and am now going to start hurling spells at this latest incarnation of Arnie’s killer mech’. It did throw me a little, with the story having progressed so far already without anything even remotely like it occurring up until that point, but I got over it, and when I did the story shifted from what I thought it would be to something slightly different. Was it still good? Absolutely. Maybe not as amazingly awesome as the first half, but still bloody fantastic. The story as a whole was brilliant, with several utterly devastating gut punches thrust upon us with little if any warning. I personally love this type of terrible revelation mainly because I can’t stand knowing that something awful is ever so slowly working its way to our characters and there’s no way we can warn them. Nope. I like the out of the blue knockouts, and this book as a couple of the best.

The language isn’t overly flowery, nor is it lacking in description. Weber always rides that perfect balance for my personal preferences, going into great detail about the subjects that are relevant to the story but glazing over other aspects that, yes, would be great to build up my understanding of the universe, but that are not essential or even that important to the story. It’s this trimming of the fat that allows the pacing to crack on at the rate it does. You’re never really given time to get bored in this book. You’re given enough info to understand all of the aspects of the current crisis without being bogged down by too much fluff. Now I like fluff, but only when it’s delivered precisely and with purpose (yes, I am aware that such a statement is somewhat of an oxymoron, but so too are my preferences in many, many respects). This is a story that, if you are a fan of Weber’s style, will raise you to dizzying hights then drown you under insurmountable sorrow. This is, in short, a great book. I can’t give it one of my incredibly fleeting 5 star ratings, but by Zeus this is as close to a 5 star as I’m willing to give without it actually handing over the prize. That damned shake-up halfway through just shaved that little bit too much off its otherwise utter magnificence. He has maybe left the book open to a sequel, which I will absolutely be buying the moment it comes out, if indeed the great Weber ever deigns to grace us with such a boon.

As for narration, Viviene Leheny does an amazing job. The full range of characters truly have unique voices and the way she interprets and presents the effects of the shake-up that I keep illuding to is brilliant. Great job.

Personal Score: 4.75 stars

Professional Score: 4.75 stars