Exodus (Starfire Book 5)

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.

I have been following this series for years now, and while White's co authors change, the quality is constant. This novel is well crafted and fits new aliens into the framework which previously existed bringing fresh challenges and perspectives to this interstellar conflict adventure. I hesitate to compare the new opponents to the voracious previous invaders, but some traits are apparently shared, if for different reasons. I look forward to the next book.

While the premise of this book was interesting, the execution was severely lacking for me. From numerous spelling errors to a complete lack of transitions from one perspective in a chapter to another (Abrupt transitions from one character to another in as many paragraphs) it was frustrating to read. I can honestly say it’s a low point in a series that I searched hard to find after reading the initial paperbacks 20 years ago. It felt like some self-published work you found in the early days of Kindle Unlimited. The publisher needs to do better.

I liked the book.

A new threat and old enemies need to put the events in insurrection behind them to face the new threat.This story isn't as engaging as previous novels but that may have been David Webers influence. While some shortcuts were taken with the storytelling, to have elaborated more on the backstory would have made this novel overlong.I still enjoyed the new aliens and the insight provided on how they think and act. And like any space opera, as the ship's and weapons get bigger and more destructive, the opportunity to concentrate on characters diminish.That being said, there is still the thrill of space combat and the sense of adventure as new weapons and tactics are invented and put into use. Neither side is perfect and that makes for an interesting story.

This is the fifth book(?) in the Starfire series. The whole series is:CrusadeIn Death GroundShiva OptionInsurrectionExodusIf you haven't yet read those, I suggest reading them before this book.The editorial reviews go into the plot, so I won't cover that. The book is similar to the other Starfire books, with lots of great starship battles. And it has some insightful looks into the social effects of cryogenic technology, long term space travel, and reincarnation. The characters are well fleshed out, and the action and pacing is good.I think that this is my favorite Starfire novel since In Death Ground, but (as other have said) it suffers from being an unfinished work.

I was quite eager to read this book as a continuation of the Stars at War universe. While a action filled, if disjounted read, it is more of a parallel offshoot of the Starfire universe than a continuation.As one example, apparently the author(s) felt that they needed a 'gimmick' to further handicap humanity's ability to defend itself. So the warp nodes now have a size limit on the starships they can transport, a limit that never existed in the previous stories and a change that makes the mass transits of the early episodes impossible.In the end, I was more irritated than enticed by the book - there were just too many continuity disconnects between universe of this story and the previous stories for it to hang as a believable sequel. Good try, but not a winner.

Steve White and Shirley Meier add another chapter to warfare in White and David Weber's efforts to bring to life the "Starfire" gaming system. It and it's sequel "Extremis" do well by Starfire's standards. I don't know how authors divide up their writing duties, but I couldn't detect a fall off in the battle sequences due to Weber's absence. The new characters are strong and well fleshed out, and the old ones are, well, the authors aged them into their dotage (except for Ian Trevayne, the original Starfire hero, sort of, depending on your side of choice in Insurrection). I only hope it's not another decade or more before the Starfire universe is again at war with something. Maybe the stories of ISW 1,2, and 3?

Having read the first four in Starfire series I came to this with expectation of continuing the issues from the earlier books. Instead it starts another bug war and progresses it slowly. Unlike the earlier books, I found no parts of the book where I wanted to read on. I completed the book but it felt a chore. There were no twists and turns that are in so many other books. Particularly irritating I found was the tendency to change scene (even from 'goody' to 'baddy') from paragraph to paragraph. Most other Weber books had some paragraph divider within the chapter to help with this change, such a extra space or row of asterisks, but this is hardly used in this book (in Kindle edition at least). It made following the plot even more difficult, taking a while to realise the scene had changed from the last paragraph. To its credit however it does refer to events in all four previous books. Books 2 and 3 in the series seemed to ignore the events in books 1 and 2. I'm going on to other Weber stuff now and may return to this series at a later date.

I've read the previous comment but had not believed it. How could a Starfire novel be so bad?Sadly, it was. It wasn't badly written, it's just that a lot of fluff was written that made no sense and was often retracted/modified for no reason. Overall the story is basically a repeat of the first contact with the Bugs in Death's Ground, just with a new species, no battle descriptions, and no information on the big picture. So what's left? A story worth 100 pages told on 360 pages - when there easily was material that should have been included that would have upped the word count beyond was was published.The bad points:The author introduces a transit limit to warp points that's never been mentioned before and immediately provides the tech to circumvent it. Very bad style.The Grand Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff don't assemble - indeed there seems to be no coordination between the allied factions, political or militarily.A new drive that makes ships far faster and that has many limitations, but we learn very little about it and it's limitations and how they affect the different races. For that matter, we learn next to nothing about the other races and how they adept to the new tech. We only learn that the Ophiuchi were attacked, but it sounds as if their allies didn't bother to help them... strange.A new race of pirates is introduced, and for some reason the humans fail to secure the warp points these pirates can use to reach allied freighters and ships - and have for many years. And that while the whole book is centered around Warp Point Assaults.As in earlier books this book brings a new class of ships 50% larger and 66% more capable. What happened to incremental increases of size? A slow creep upwards? The naming scheme stays true to the series and doesn't make much sense. Neither does the continual use of ships five or more categories smaller in battle fleets as conventional combatants. You'd expect them to be specialized designs (EW, drone control, anything really, but nothing).Warp Point assaults have some new weapons to clean away fortifications. They're now called cruiser sized and filled with explosives. Given this change, why aren't warp point assault fleets unmanned? At least the initial waves? The author provides explicit indication that the tech exists - AMBAMM - yet fails to spread it to other components of warp point assaults.The new aliens are apparently incredible intelligent and productive. An invasion force of less that 20 million not only manages to colonize a planet but at the same time build and crew hundreds of SDNs, build massive mine fields, defense bases, and at the same time include lots of new technology they reverse engineered into the ships - including a drive to pass through warp points, new STL drive, and other revolutionary techs. Their technological progress is literally beyond comprehension, how quickly they include it into warships is unbelievable, and the numbers they can build/crew simply out of proportion by several orders of magnitude compared to their enemies. A sad day for a series that has always attempted to handle industrial and technological progression realistically.The humans are shocked by the size of alien defense ships - yet in the Theban war we saw massive asteroid fortresses shattered without much problem. And during the Bug War the Star Union used 'mammoth asteroid fortresses'. The author seems to ignore these facts and makes the ships close to invulnerable. Given the description of primary and force beams, this is utterly unrealistic. No explanation is provided.The Star Union of Crucis - so far known as friend and ally as well as the second most powerful economy - is completely absent. In fact the author refers to the Ophiuchi as best fighter pilots when they lost the title to the Star Union during the often referenced Bug War.Warp Point manipulation. It is logical and perhaps overdue that they learn to manipulate warp points, but the way it was introduced does not fit. It's not just the new transit limit and the new tech allowing to circumvent it being revealed in one breath. The ability to create new warp points I would believe to be the ultimate application of this tech, not a basic application. I'm also more than a little shocked that nobody questions the safety of the tech - they question whether it works at all, but not what possible dangers it could have - while in theory the natural warp points are no longer needed, they do have immense economic importance. The risk of a warp point disappearing should be a major concern given the current limits of the tech.I'm probably missing a few things, but the list should give you an idea of the massive problems this work suffers. The aliens are actually a good addition to the Starfire universe, but it seems the only thing in this book up to the standards of the series.One point not mentioned in the description is that this is only the first part of the story. It ends without resolving anything; and the second novel failed to be published in the years since, so it will probably never arrive.In short: Good idea badly executed with some serious mistakes in the research of the existing Starfire material and bad/unrealistic progression of industrial/economic/technological aspects of the story.

Dans l'univers de la confédération des années après le conflit existentiel avec les insectes , alors que le temps a passé , des vaisseaux mondes se présentent ...Une espèce alien sentiente est en effet en route pour se trouver un nouveau monde . Il y en a bien un mais il est déjà occupé ...C'est tout une espèce qui est contrainte de s'exiler de son monde d'origine et donc de se trouver une petite place au soleil .Comme on s'en doute les places risquent d'être chères ....Comme dans les tomes précédents les enjeux sont bien amenés et dramatisés au possible .Personnellement j'aime bien la façon d'écrire de Steve White car il propose généralement une prose de qualité plus que raisonnable .Cet univers est bien pensé et bien développé sur le papier , il y a de l'idée ...Le volet technologique est toujours aussi bien exploité sans être pour autant un bréviaire de hard science .La caractérisation est bien callée , et le récit affiche globalement une grande envergure si on se réfère : aux énormes distances , à une coalition et à une confrontation de forces bigarrées , aux détails de l'intrigue qui sont développés jusqu'au bout de leurs logiques et de leurs implications ( stratégiques notamment ) .Tout cela est amené par un récit bien rythmé et convainquant , même si quelquefois , il se trouve être ponctuellement , relativement prévisible ....Les aliens nouveaux venus sont assez mystérieux , relativement inconnaissables , et ils interagissent bien avec les données de base de cet univers qui est riche et qui possède une longue histoire ...N'étant pas idolâtre plus que cela , je ne vois pas à ce stade du cycle, de raisons sérieuses de vraiment devoir regretter l'absence de Weber .A mon humble avis , c'est de la science-fiction militaire de qualité ? Mais l'univers est suffisamment détaillé et suffisamment solidement pensé et décrit , que c'est un réel plaisir de s'y perde et de s'y complaire ....Je pense que on peut prendre contact avec cet univers (  The Stars at War  ET  The Stars At War II  ) par ce tome , le troisième dans l'édition actuelle car malgré les aspects chronologiques ( historiques ) indéniables , ce récit est suffisamment indépendant de ce qui précède pour que son autonomie soit crédible et avérée et donc non pénalisante pour le lecteur ...Le quatrième de couverture :Once before, the sentient races in the known part of the galaxy , humans, Orions , Ophiuchi and Gorm had united to defeat alien invaders. The bugs , were as incomprehensibly alien as they were revoltingly evil, using all other living things, intelligent or not, as food, and they had been defeated at a terrible cost. Decades have since passed and the gallant warriors of the battle against the bugs have grown old, while new generations have grown complacent . . . dangerously so. Long ago, much of the population of an entire planet had built a huge fleet of ships, each ship larger than a city, and fled their world before its sun went nova. Those slower-than-light ships traversed many light years, and have now arrived at the world they intend to make their new home. They regard the fact that the planet is already colonized by humans as a mere inconvenience, the more so since their mode of communication is so different from anything humans use that they do not consider humans and their allies to be truly intelligent. And the arriving aliens know or, at least, they believe that when they die they will be reincarnated, so they do not hesitate to attack humans and their allies with suicidal fury. This time, the intelligent races of the old alliance will not have to worry about becoming an invaders meal but that will be small comfort if the invaders decide that genocide is justified for their own survival. . . . The Stars at WarThe Stars At War II

Perfect

Enjoyed very much