Exodus
Author: Steve White & Shirley Meier
Publisher: Baen
Date: 2006
Pgs: 270
Dewey: WHI
Disposition: Inter Library Loan via Missouri River Regional Library, Jefferson City, Missouri to Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
The Arduans companion star is going to go nova. They know it is coming. The answer is to leap toward the stars with everything that they can carry. Refugees in ships many miles across...at lower than light speed. Generation ships. A telepathic species who have psychic immortality. But the new homes that their diaspora has carried them to have creatures on them. They don’t believe that the humans they encounter are intelligent. Vermin. The planets are covered in vermin. And vermin don’t deserve to have planets to themselves. Then, the animals fight back.
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Genre:
Science Fiction
Military
Space Opera
Action
Adventure

Why this book:
I’ve loved the Starfire series.
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Favorite Character:
First Space Lord Li Han. She is a force of nature here analogus to Howard Anderson and Ivan Antonov in the previous books.

It was a good character beat when Cyrus had to be strong in the face of the enemy as he managed the retreat of his fleet and mourned the loss of his friend.

Least Favorite Character:
All of the Arduans. They are a bit of cardboard.

Favorite Scene / Quote:
Li Hans surprise about the Devastator class at the allied conference on Zephraim was cool.

The arrival and battle of the 2nd set of Arudan invader refugees is better than the 1st. Maybe because there is more grounding in the tech and the ideas than the same around the 1st groups arrival and conquest.

The spider web ambush was awesome ship to ship militaria in space.

Third Bellerophon is well done. This is everything I love abotu the Starfire series. Heroics, drama, things going boom, life and death.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
The behind enemy lines guerilla aspect would have had to be gigantic and superiorly dramatic to stand up to previous instances of that aspect in the other books. And it doesn’t.

Hmm Moments:
The starship battles aspect of science fiction has always been a favorite of mine. This info dumps on tactical ship criteria are mostly well placed and pertinent.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
There’s a hole in Vice Admiral Krishmahnta and her staff’s strategy. They talk of being outflanked thru the Magnus-Zhi warp point chain. The problem is that the warp point between Magnus and Zhi is a closed warp point and therefore invisible to sensors. The Arduans are neophytes at the warp point game and all the ones that they’ve found and used so far they’ve been lead to by the Alliance. So, the idea that if the Alliance made the effort to hide the closed warp point, moved or destroyed the stuff around it, then the only way the Arduans would find it would be if they stumbled through it. This would have effectively lead the Arduans into a cul-de-sac that they couldn’t escape from without accidentally falling through the closed warp point. And space is big.

Sigh. Art...really? That’s feels cliched.

Missed Opportunity:
Where are the Crucians?
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Last Page Sound:
To be continued.

Author Assessment:
I’ll be there for the next book, because I know the potential. When done right, Starfire is an awesome sci fi militaria platform.

Editorial Assessment:
At book’s end, I feel that a quarter of this could have been left on the editor’s floor. I enjoyed it, but I am steeped in the series. If this was someone’s intro to the series, I have misgivings about whether they would return for another bite.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
it’s alright
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Seems to be my week to read incomplete books. White and Weber, though this is written in collaboration with Shirley Meier, took their initial success of giving us stories based on the Starfire game, like Insurrection, and made them two book long tales. Sometimes with so many rehashed battles that one wondered why bother.

You could see another battle coming and could jump ahead fifty pages as nothing would be different from the last battle described. History as repetitive to its core.

This book so far did not do that. Each battle did revisit a new aspect of the war it was describing. Though one can get lost in the technical side that White dwells on and throws in. Who in the end cares how many of each type of ship is brought to the battle when you are not invested in those who are the ships. It is just a bunch of numbers and then, White spends too much time on that, instead of delving into what all that tonnage might mean. Or that they are configured differently (ASMBMMMBBEEEE-Letters that to the game of Starfire mean a unit of Armor, then a Shield, A Missile, A Beam.... which if the book ties into a campaign system that everyone can replay, might mean something)

Where another book I read this last week did not make logic of their world building (60 men in an incursion wreak so much havoc that thousands are sent to deal with it, who live in a garrison as large as the pentagon, all in a medieval setting.) White does not suffer from that. They have been working on the universe for many years. Where we lack is that they have provided a map that is only half useful. Key places you are trying to find are not on it, so you are thrown wasting time looking for those places.

It may not be a reread like Insurrection or Crusade, but it completes what one would like to know about the universe. Though last, White too attached to characters he previously introduced wasted too much time bringing such back into the story he is telling. He has such a broad canvas of time he could have moved entirely onto new generations without sacrifice. ( )

Somewhat too disjointed for my taste. The new alien invaders are a bit hard to believe and to follow. It was quite hard to follow at times. Definitely not as enjoyable as the other book of the series. ( )

Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/chapters/1416520988/1416520988.htm