ecl@mtgzz.UUCP (e.c.leeper) (05/16/85)
TORCH OF HONOR by Roger MacBride Allen
Baen, 1985, $2.95.
A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper
The science fiction war story seems to be making a come-back, and this
is one of the new breed. The setting is New Finland, which has been
attacked and conquered by the Guardians, a society of neo-Nazis who fled
into space in the 21st Century via the newly discovered faster-than-light
travel. (Ah, yes, another Nazis-from-space story!) Our protagonist,
operating a survey ship in the vicinity, finds himself in the middle of the
war to recover New Finland and save the universe (or at least this small
portion of it) from the clutches of the bad guys.
In general, the book is well-written and the plot moves along quickly.
My knowledge of military strategy is not such that I can comment on the
accuracy of the maneuvers or the likelihood of the outcomes, but it *sounds*
convincing. But this book does have a couple of flaws--one literary, one
logical. The literary flaw (if one can call it that) is that it is told in
the first person. In a novel of self-discovery, this works out well. In a
novel of war, it tends to telegraph the ending--while it's true that the
reader *could* be reading the journal of someone who dies in the last
chapter, it is much more likely that some of the reader's interest is
blunted by the almost certain knowledge that the character *won't* die.
The logical flaw is considerably worse. The main character is sent to
build a receiver at a certain latitude and longitude. But when he looks it
up, it is in the middle of the ocean. It turns out that after the original
latitude and longitude lines were drawn, the best location for the capital
city was right on the equivalent of the International Date Line (180 degrees
longitude). So the colonists re-drew the lines, but Earth was still working
from the old maps. The receiver *must* be at this point (because of
balancing orbital and coriolis forces or some such), so the protagonists go
to great lengths to circumvent this problem. But if Earth was using old
maps, they should have been also, and then the point that Earth wanted would
have been perfectly accessible! In fact, the point under water was a
totally wrong point!
In spite of this (and thank goodness it's not the crux of the novel),
TORCH OF HONOR is engrossing, and a prime example of the new hard SF. Try
it.
Evelyn C. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl