Re: Highlights and Lowlights - June 2024

On Wed, 3 Jul 2024 14:25:18 -0400, Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com>
wrote:

On 7/3/24 11:27 AM, Paul S Person wrote:

On Tue, 2 Jul 2024 12:56:50 -0400, Tony Nance <tnusenet17@gmail.com>
wrote:
 

On 7/2/24 1:54 AM, Titus G wrote:

On 2/07/24 07:56, Tony Nance wrote:

>
Highlights and Lowlights - June 2024
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Books are listed in reverse chronological order from how I read them,
using a very primitive rating system:
“+” are good, and more “+” are better
“-“ are not good, and more “-“ are worse

snip

>
( +++ - )  Fleet Elements - Williams [Praxis #5]
Good! Lots of intrigue, lots of space action, some unexpected events. An
incident near the end is handled in a very puzzling way (imho), and the
way it’s handled will influence book #6 greatly, where the Terran forces
vs the Zanshaa forces will surely come to a head.
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Isn't Fleet Elements Praxis #2 ?
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The three Dread Empire's Fall books are generally considered to be
Praxis #1 to #3 - consider that #1 is titled "The Praxis".
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My favourite William's was the Metropolitan series and I also enjoyed
Dread Empire's Fall which even improved with book three but though I
enjoyed The Accidental War (Praxis #1), I thought it too implausible

>
I remember thinking The Accidental War was a tough go, and for all the
plot advancement it achieved could have been a pamphlet instead of a
book. Gratefully -- some years later -- I found myself enjoying Fleet
Elements.
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and I did not finish Fleet Elements because there was too much
redundancy or repetition and it was too similar to Dread Empires Fall
which I had just reread prior to beginning the Praxis series. So I am
not familiar with the puzzling incident.
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I'll put a spoiler for the incident after my sign-off.
- Tony
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Big spoiler for Fleet Elements below...
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No, really, it's a big spoiler...
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Well okay, you've been warned...
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Throughout the book, Lamey has been struggling to line up investors for
his financial scheming and has been more and more overtly threatening
Sula (definitely blackmail, and also hinting at physical violence) if
she doesn't come through for him.
>
Toward the end of the book, Lamey meets with Sula alone, and as the
conversation doesn't go the way Lamey wants, he sucker-punches her in
the gut and reaches for her face/jaw as she's bent over. She shoots him,
he dies, and Martinez is the first one to enter in the immediate aftermath.
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Ok, fine...Lamey has been threatening her, he assaulted her, it wasn't
clear the assault would stop, and she killed him. Here's the puzzling part:
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Both Martinez and Sula act like she's done the most heinous thing
imaginable, they immediately contrive to hide/destroy the body and all
of the evidence, and of course since she now has the worst cooties ever,
Martinez decides she needs to be assigned to an extremely distant part
of the fleet, certainly nowhere near him, and now he never wants to see
her again.
>
What? Did I miss something plausible?

 
I have no idea.
 
Perhaps their culture is very strict about killing people for personal
reasons and does not recognize an ongoing assault as an excuse. Is
Lamey, by any chance, her superior officer in a military organization?
Or is the "fleet" some non-military entity? Are there other factors
(is the culture sexist, with males in charge, for example)?

>
Not in this case - this book being #5 in this series, we (the readers)
know that Lamey is a devious civilian with a sketchy past, and Sula is a
military hero[1] with a sketchy almost-buried past - Lamey being
probably the only character that knows Sula's past, hence the threat of
blackmail.

Then perhaps they are concerned that her sketchy past will be revealed
in any investigation. Or that, discovering the blackmail, the
investigators will decide that they have discovered a Motive.

But I am just firing at random here, so to speak.

Tony
[1] Possibly the only military person more heroic and esteemed than Sula
is Martinez.
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--
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"