trike's review against another edition
3.0
I see that a lot of people have a love/hate feeling about this book, and many seem genuinely mystified as to why they don't really like it yet find it compulsively readable. I think I know why.
The first reason is that it is formulaic and generic in the sense that Meluch has taken the usual tropes of "wet navy = space navy" and simply run with them, while serving up straightforward action performing swashbuckling acts of derring-do by black-and-white characters.
The second is that the writing is as barebones as you'll find outside of a screenplay or an outline. In fact, it often reads like an outline that has merely had some areas a bit more fleshed out than others, sort of like Chip Kidd's classic design for the cover of Jurassic Park where he took a Xerox copy of a T. rex skeleton and just started coloring in the spaces and stopped when he thought it looked it good enough. (Seriously, that's how he did it. See his TED talk for more.)
I enjoy reading screenplays, probably more than I like reading books. Purple prose bores me. Overly florid and detailed description puts me right to sleep. Sometimes I just want authors to Get. To. The. Point. So that style here wasn't too bothersome other than Meluch didn't use complete sentences most of the time. That does kind of bother me. I like to see a nice balance between terseness and sentence fragments.
(Holy fucking shit, iPad, I MEANT to write "terseness," not "tenseness." Stop it. Any mistakes in my writing belong to Apple. I'm flawless.)
Anyway, I liked this book a bit less than the first one, [b:The Myriad|640814|The Myriad (Tour of the Merrimack, #1)|R.M. Meluch|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309199732s/640814.jpg|627008]. (Which I see I haven't reviewed here because I read it some years before joining Goodreads. Suffice to say it was a 4-star book.) This one feels like it has caricatures rather than characters.
That said, I do like the fact Meluch has made her world consistent and sticks to the rules she's made up throughout. Too many space fantasies simply make something up to serve the needs of the plot and then forget about them later. (Looking at you, Stars War and Trek.)
This reads a lot like the Horatio Hornblower -- or more probably Aubrey-Mautin -- seafaring tales. Except instead of England going against Spain or France, it's America going against a reconstituted Roman Empire... in spaaaace! They even run out flags for some reason. And at one point someone draws up a facsimile of the Stars and Stripes and hoists it into space in the time it took you to read this sentence. So things in this book FEEL like they're moving incredibly fast but when you think about them they actually move quite slow. Except when they don't. That love/hate thing again.
This is like an action movie where nobody eats or pees.
I'd like to give this 4 stars, but there was too much of a hint of that deus ex machina from time to time. Such as when Captain Farragut orders his crew to learn how to fight with swords, and then later their systems fail (no spoilers as to why) and they have to fight with swords. I mean, it's really just so she can write Master and Commander (in spaaaace!), but Meluch does come up with an internally-consistent reason for it to happen. I just wish it had been better integrated and not such an obvious Chekov's Gun.
If you like military space opera, you'll like this. You should check out the [b:Sten|714720|Sten (Sten, #1)|Chris Bunch|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388385381s/714720.jpg|700974] series by Bunch and Cole. It has similar action and style, but they use complete sentences.
The first reason is that it is formulaic and generic in the sense that Meluch has taken the usual tropes of "wet navy = space navy" and simply run with them, while serving up straightforward action performing swashbuckling acts of derring-do by black-and-white characters.
The second is that the writing is as barebones as you'll find outside of a screenplay or an outline. In fact, it often reads like an outline that has merely had some areas a bit more fleshed out than others, sort of like Chip Kidd's classic design for the cover of Jurassic Park where he took a Xerox copy of a T. rex skeleton and just started coloring in the spaces and stopped when he thought it looked it good enough. (Seriously, that's how he did it. See his TED talk for more.)
I enjoy reading screenplays, probably more than I like reading books. Purple prose bores me. Overly florid and detailed description puts me right to sleep. Sometimes I just want authors to Get. To. The. Point. So that style here wasn't too bothersome other than Meluch didn't use complete sentences most of the time. That does kind of bother me. I like to see a nice balance between terseness and sentence fragments.
(Holy fucking shit, iPad, I MEANT to write "terseness," not "tenseness." Stop it. Any mistakes in my writing belong to Apple. I'm flawless.)
Anyway, I liked this book a bit less than the first one, [b:The Myriad|640814|The Myriad (Tour of the Merrimack, #1)|R.M. Meluch|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309199732s/640814.jpg|627008]. (Which I see I haven't reviewed here because I read it some years before joining Goodreads. Suffice to say it was a 4-star book.) This one feels like it has caricatures rather than characters.
That said, I do like the fact Meluch has made her world consistent and sticks to the rules she's made up throughout. Too many space fantasies simply make something up to serve the needs of the plot and then forget about them later. (Looking at you, Stars War and Trek.)
This reads a lot like the Horatio Hornblower -- or more probably Aubrey-Mautin -- seafaring tales. Except instead of England going against Spain or France, it's America going against a reconstituted Roman Empire... in spaaaace! They even run out flags for some reason. And at one point someone draws up a facsimile of the Stars and Stripes and hoists it into space in the time it took you to read this sentence. So things in this book FEEL like they're moving incredibly fast but when you think about them they actually move quite slow. Except when they don't. That love/hate thing again.
This is like an action movie where nobody eats or pees.
I'd like to give this 4 stars, but there was too much of a hint of that deus ex machina from time to time. Such as when Captain Farragut orders his crew to learn how to fight with swords, and then later their systems fail (no spoilers as to why) and they have to fight with swords. I mean, it's really just so she can write Master and Commander (in spaaaace!), but Meluch does come up with an internally-consistent reason for it to happen. I just wish it had been better integrated and not such an obvious Chekov's Gun.
If you like military space opera, you'll like this. You should check out the [b:Sten|714720|Sten (Sten, #1)|Chris Bunch|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388385381s/714720.jpg|700974] series by Bunch and Cole. It has similar action and style, but they use complete sentences.
mferrante83's review against another edition
4.0
The Wolf Star, the second book in the, Tour of the Merrimackpicks up right after The Myriad. If you haven’t read The Myriad I honestly suggest that you stop reading this review now as any information about The Wolf Star will spoil the major twist towards the close of The Myriad. Consider this ample forwarning of major spoilers from the first book.
Things were irreprably changed in The Myraid. What was no longer is and while what we discovered about the crew of the Merrimack remains to true to an extent time has shifted and the decisions characters make in The Wolf Star an informed under the influence of an entirely, or mostly, different timeline. Out on patrol with her sister ship the Monitor, the Merrimack finds herself under attack from Pallantine forces. Discovering that their systems have been compromised and the Monitor has gone missing the crew of the Merrimack sets forth on a rescue mission. That rescue mission snowballs into something bigger much bigger.
Thinking back on my time with The Wolf Star I was less cognizant of precicely how much happened over the course of the novel. While reading I was completely absorbed with the action and it is only now in hindsight that I realize precisely how much actually occurred. The Wolf Star is a novel absolutely packed to the gills with action from skin of the teeth rescues, military trials, the revelation of familiar enemies, to epic space combat The Wolf Star does everything and does it with style to spare while never batting an eye.
Where as The Myriad dropped readers into the action almost immediately The Wolf Star rolls things back a little bit thanks primarily to the changes caused by The Myriad’s conclusion. As a result readers get to see the Merrimack at a more formative stage. Readers get to witness John Faragut’s decision to equip his soldiers with swords, get to meet the whole Farragut clan (seeing the Captain’s relationship with his father provided some solid insight into his character), and get some deeper understanding about Jose Maria de Cordillera’s presence on the ship (he doesn’t appear until much later in The Wolf Star).
The fun part of The Wolf Star is that readers get to witness first hand events mentioned in passing during The Myriad. Due to the disruption in time found in the Myriad system those events an unfolding at a different pace than in the previous timeline though it appears many of the events are similar to those mentioned in the first novel. I won’t lie but I’m still smarting from the loss of Augustus and am anxious to see his return and the complicated superiority of the Romans thrown against the brick wall of Farragut’s confidence and swagger made for some damned interesting reading. Thankfully we get to see Farragut interact with a whole mess load of Romans in The Wolf Star.
Last but certainly not least The Wolf Star reintroduces The Hive. As inscrutable and as inhuman as ever they make a truly terrifying villain and the revelation of their existence impacts the novel, and the series, in interesting ways. R. M. Meluch’s Tour of the Merrimack is a consistently entertaining series and The Wolf Star, despite everything that is crammed into it, is a novel blazes by at near blinding speed. More than simply an exciting novel The Wolf Star shows great detail in the characterization of both its heroes and villains providing vibrant and lifelike personalities that leave the reader heavily invested in their fates. If you are a fan of military science fiction you should definitely be reading this series.
Spoiler
Things were irreprably changed in The Myraid. What was no longer is and while what we discovered about the crew of the Merrimack remains to true to an extent time has shifted and the decisions characters make in The Wolf Star an informed under the influence of an entirely, or mostly, different timeline. Out on patrol with her sister ship the Monitor, the Merrimack finds herself under attack from Pallantine forces. Discovering that their systems have been compromised and the Monitor has gone missing the crew of the Merrimack sets forth on a rescue mission. That rescue mission snowballs into something bigger much bigger.
Thinking back on my time with The Wolf Star I was less cognizant of precicely how much happened over the course of the novel. While reading I was completely absorbed with the action and it is only now in hindsight that I realize precisely how much actually occurred. The Wolf Star is a novel absolutely packed to the gills with action from skin of the teeth rescues, military trials, the revelation of familiar enemies, to epic space combat The Wolf Star does everything and does it with style to spare while never batting an eye.
Where as The Myriad dropped readers into the action almost immediately The Wolf Star rolls things back a little bit thanks primarily to the changes caused by The Myriad’s conclusion. As a result readers get to see the Merrimack at a more formative stage. Readers get to witness John Faragut’s decision to equip his soldiers with swords, get to meet the whole Farragut clan (seeing the Captain’s relationship with his father provided some solid insight into his character), and get some deeper understanding about Jose Maria de Cordillera’s presence on the ship (he doesn’t appear until much later in The Wolf Star).
The fun part of The Wolf Star is that readers get to witness first hand events mentioned in passing during The Myriad. Due to the disruption in time found in the Myriad system those events an unfolding at a different pace than in the previous timeline though it appears many of the events are similar to those mentioned in the first novel. I won’t lie but I’m still smarting from the loss of Augustus and am anxious to see his return and the complicated superiority of the Romans thrown against the brick wall of Farragut’s confidence and swagger made for some damned interesting reading. Thankfully we get to see Farragut interact with a whole mess load of Romans in The Wolf Star.
Last but certainly not least The Wolf Star reintroduces The Hive. As inscrutable and as inhuman as ever they make a truly terrifying villain and the revelation of their existence impacts the novel, and the series, in interesting ways. R. M. Meluch’s Tour of the Merrimack is a consistently entertaining series and The Wolf Star, despite everything that is crammed into it, is a novel blazes by at near blinding speed. More than simply an exciting novel The Wolf Star shows great detail in the characterization of both its heroes and villains providing vibrant and lifelike personalities that leave the reader heavily invested in their fates. If you are a fan of military science fiction you should definitely be reading this series.
msjenne's review against another edition
3.0
I wouldn't exactly recommend this book to anyone, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.
dashnell's review against another edition
4.0
After a story reset at the end of the first book, RM Meluch does a switcheroo on certain characters, and makes the Roman allies the main villain, which is to the benefit of series. The characters, with names like Farragut, Steele, Kerry Blue and Cowboy, are stoic and true, have a black & white sense of honor that we expect out of military folk, and speak in jargon and off-colored witticisms that feel familiar to anyone who's served aboard naval vessels.
Meluch gets it. These characters have strong interpersonal relationships, crushes on each other, conflicts with each other but in the end it's all about kicking Space Roman ass and taking names. This is pure fun set on a space ship. It has little to say about anything deeper than demonstrating how badass their characters are in a pinch.
A lot of side characters from the previous novels took a bigger role this time out, most notably the ship's XO Calli Carmel, who is the most perfect human being ever created, and yet you don't mind it.
Take the epic space antics of Star Trek, add in some current-world military flavor, and the style-over-substance characterization of the Ocean's Eleven films, put it in a blender and be ready to rush out and grab the third book in this fun sci-fi series.
Meluch gets it. These characters have strong interpersonal relationships, crushes on each other, conflicts with each other but in the end it's all about kicking Space Roman ass and taking names. This is pure fun set on a space ship. It has little to say about anything deeper than demonstrating how badass their characters are in a pinch.
A lot of side characters from the previous novels took a bigger role this time out, most notably the ship's XO Calli Carmel, who is the most perfect human being ever created, and yet you don't mind it.
Take the epic space antics of Star Trek, add in some current-world military flavor, and the style-over-substance characterization of the Ocean's Eleven films, put it in a blender and be ready to rush out and grab the third book in this fun sci-fi series.
wealhtheow's review against another edition
3.0
An alternate-universe version of [b:The Myriad|218479|All the Myriad Ways|Larry Niven|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|2015552].
jenne's review
3.0
I wouldn't exactly recommend this book to anyone, but I enjoyed the hell out of it.
brownbetty's review
4.0
I am a bit suspicious of this book, because I cannot pin down precisely why I enjoyed it so much. In general, I do not enjoy military fiction, but this one took me from "stayed up late" to "stayed up early." It's a sequel to [b:The Myriad|218479|All the Myriad Ways|Larry Niven|/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|2015552], a book which gives you a very decent military SF story, and then in the very last chapter gives the reader a surprise kick to the balls. (I am not equiped with balls, so my surprise was extreme.) I think I would recommend it if you enjoyed [a:David Feintuch|304225|David Feintuch|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]'s early Midshipman books, before they became repetitive and whiny. I cannot say if fans of Military SF would like it, though, because the charms of that genre are opaque to me.
I think you could read Book 2 without having read book one, but you will be depriving yourself of certain subtle enjoyments (and a kick in the nuts). Everything which is right about this first one is right about this one, from my review of that one: The world and its characters more original than I expect from the genre, and the physics are almost a character on their own. It's action packed, and neither the military action nor the periods between ever seem to drag.
One thing that annoyed me: much of the military action was between the Roman empire, which never fell, merely went underground for two millennia (is this awesome y/y?), and the US of A. Consequently, it's a very western clash of civilizations. In the USA military, I recognized patronymics from all over the world, but the ranking officers seemed to have suspiciously Western-European surnames.
On reasons why I enjoyed it, I think part of it is that the characterization is deeper than is the standard in some military SF, such that one wanted to know what happened to the characters more than the outcome of the battle.
Another caveat: at one point, the US military sends our heroes to investigate a Roman project with a suggestive code name. My respect for military intelligence is not vast, but I do think they have generally proved themselves capable of coming up with codenames that cannot be deciphered by an idiot with a thesaurus.
I think you could read Book 2 without having read book one, but you will be depriving yourself of certain subtle enjoyments (and a kick in the nuts). Everything which is right about this first one is right about this one, from my review of that one: The world and its characters more original than I expect from the genre, and the physics are almost a character on their own. It's action packed, and neither the military action nor the periods between ever seem to drag.
One thing that annoyed me: much of the military action was between the Roman empire, which never fell, merely went underground for two millennia (is this awesome y/y?), and the US of A. Consequently, it's a very western clash of civilizations. In the USA military, I recognized patronymics from all over the world, but the ranking officers seemed to have suspiciously Western-European surnames.
On reasons why I enjoyed it, I think part of it is that the characterization is deeper than is the standard in some military SF, such that one wanted to know what happened to the characters more than the outcome of the battle.
Another caveat: at one point, the US military sends our heroes to investigate a Roman project with a suggestive code name. My respect for military intelligence is not vast, but I do think they have generally proved themselves capable of coming up with codenames that cannot be deciphered by an idiot with a thesaurus.
thefourthvine's review
4.0
Whyyyyyyyyy is this series so addictive? I read the first one and immediately ordered two more and twitched until they arrived. Then I got one on my Kindle, because I could not stand to wait for an order to arrive. I read each one over the course of a single day, at the fastest possible pace, reading while doing things like changing diapers and failing to sleep. And this book is good, and the series is good, but it's not, you know. That good. I don't understand it at all.
Okay, I partly understand it: Meluch knows pacing and action. If you make it to page 40 in one of these books, you're probably going to keep reading until the end, even if you don't like it. (Her Amazon reviews have a lot of bewildered people going, "I didn't like it. I mean, I read it very quickly and couldn't put it down, but...")
But the thing is - lots of writers have a great sense of pacing and write fabulous action sequences. Many of them write things I prefer to military SF (and especially to military SF like this; in the even-numbered entries in this series, the US and Rome are fighting each other, and I like both sides and don't want them to fight). But still. This series was crack for me. I could not stop reading. I couldn't even stop rooting for the US, even though I liked Rome, thought they were mostly in the right on the original cause of the war, and didn't want the two groups fighting.
For me, this is probably the weakest book of the series, largely because it doesn't contain much of Augustus, who is my favorite character by far. But "weak" in this case still translates to "OMG addictive," so it's the kind of weak that's, you know, still pretty strong.
I can't say who I would recommend this book to - I wouldn't have recommended it to myself, after all, but I loved the series - but I will say that anyone who picks it up should probably have some free time blocked out for reading. Just in case.
Okay, I partly understand it: Meluch knows pacing and action. If you make it to page 40 in one of these books, you're probably going to keep reading until the end, even if you don't like it. (Her Amazon reviews have a lot of bewildered people going, "I didn't like it. I mean, I read it very quickly and couldn't put it down, but...")
But the thing is - lots of writers have a great sense of pacing and write fabulous action sequences. Many of them write things I prefer to military SF (and especially to military SF like this; in the even-numbered entries in this series, the US and Rome are fighting each other, and I like both sides and don't want them to fight). But still. This series was crack for me. I could not stop reading. I couldn't even stop rooting for the US, even though I liked Rome, thought they were mostly in the right on the original cause of the war, and didn't want the two groups fighting.
For me, this is probably the weakest book of the series, largely because it doesn't contain much of Augustus, who is my favorite character by far. But "weak" in this case still translates to "OMG addictive," so it's the kind of weak that's, you know, still pretty strong.
I can't say who I would recommend this book to - I wouldn't have recommended it to myself, after all, but I loved the series - but I will say that anyone who picks it up should probably have some free time blocked out for reading. Just in case.
trin's review
3.0
Less fun than its predecessor, but still strangely captivating. In a weird way, this book feels oddly unnecessary—it kind of just resets the universe back to where it was at the beginning of [b:The Myriad|218479|All the Myriad Ways|Larry Niven|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg|2015552], so reading the first two volumes of this series makes you feel like you’ve simply come full circle. There’s also not nearly enough Augustus in this one (though still way too much weird gender fail). And yet, despite these flaws, I still really want to read the next book in the series. These are like the Chewy Chips Ahoy! of reading material—obviously really not very good on a fundamental level, and yet once you start eating, you just cannot stop stuffing your cake hole with the little bastards.
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