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March Up Country
I love the Baen Free Library. I've been discovering new (to me) authors...as in David Weber (with his Honor Harrington and Safehold series') and Eric Flint (1632 series). I had put the Prince Roger's series (March Up Country, March to the Stars, March to the Sea, We Few) on my "to be read" list but pretty far down. Then I read folks here complaining about John Ringo and his right wing politics. Which piqued my interest and so I decided to read March Up Country by John Ringo and David Weber. Love the Baen folks as their books are DRM free and I was able to read this via iBooks on my iPad.
First a note about iBooks. I used the dictionary feature several times while reading this book. Words I'd normally just skip over, I looked up and there they were, actual words, in the dictionary. Very cool.
This is definitely a "man's territory" book. Soldiers, war, politics, technology, battle scenes. I loved it. And it was kinda funny that the bad guys are "the Saints" who are an environmentally wacko society. Kind of the opposite of Avatar. Humans are bad, all human impact on the environment is bad. But really, other than a few references, it's not what the book is about.
There is this whiny, spoiled, privileged prince -- third in line to be emperor of the Empire of man. He's sent out to an undesirable world to represent the crown and is traveling with a company of the best of the best of the best marines as his body guards. They are mixing like oil and water on the voyage...until the ship is sabotaged and they wind up on a tropical backwater planet. The planet is the Amazon jungle -- only much much worse. The natives are 4 armed bipeds, the Mardukans, who have a pre industrial revolution level of technology.
There is only one modern outpost, the spaceport -- but it's in enemy hands. Fleeing their destroyed ship, the prince and the marines are forced to land on the complete other side of the planet and have to....wait for it....march up country. They travel through the jungle, battle nasty beasties and warring natives....and our whiny prince starts maturing.
The book is populated with a variety of very interesting characters who have a depth that goes beyond just battles and fighting.
It's a nice, fast paced, quick read. If you like this type of book, you'll like this book. It's a nice "meat and potatoes" example of the genre. It's also a fairly quick read. I've already finished the second book before I got around to writing this review.
Lee
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