David Weber's "Out of the Darkness"

[guest]

In fairness, this is quite original for Weber, I never in a million years would have expected such a thing, so there is that. I think it's time to start the new meme, say it with me:

OH DAVID WEBER NO!!!

[MKSheppard]

So I guess this would be another checkmark in the box "Baen books is now pulp trash"?

[Losonti Tokash]

So I guess this would be another checkmark in the box "Baen books is now pulp trash"?

It's not published by Baen, actually.

[guest]

So I guess this would be another checkmark in the box "Baen books is now pulp trash"?

It's not published by Baen, actually.

is it tor? Cuz I had pretty much given up on webers books published by baen, however his safehold series seemed decent, I had taken that as a result of not everybody at tor being totally beholden to DW and so he had an editor that makes him actually cut out a lot of stupid bullshit, unlike with the honorverse books these days. Also, how many pages is in the new book? I usually find overall length to be a good indicator of the quality of a DW book, since the early honorverse books usually clocked in at under 600 pages, but as it got longer and more ridiculous the books started topping 800 and up. As I recall the At All Costs paperback came in at over a thousand pages, it was also the most over the top one too. Same thing for the 16XX series, the first one was only like 400 pages, then david weber got on board and the books started becoming like twice as long, they also drastically dropped in quality.

[aerius]

I believe it was a bit under 400 pages, it's definitely a lot slimmer than the other Weber books I saw in the bookstore.

[Simon_Jester]

Guest, there's a huge amount of 1632 material that Weber never laid a finger on; was the decline in quality 'just him,' or was it general, in your eyes?

[guest]

Guest, there's a huge amount of 1632 material that Weber never laid a finger on; was the decline in quality 'just him,' or was it general, in your eyes?

Well, I tried to read the series in chronological order, so I started with 1632 which I thought was pretty damn good, but then 1633 showed up which was vastly longer and wordier, then 1634: The Baltic War which was also ridiculously wordy. I also got really annoyed at the ridiculous Frenchwank what with Cardinal Richelieu seemingly being given superhuman mind control powers over the other nations of Europe.

My theory was that it was David Weber, due to the fact that both of those books were ridiculously long winded; a staple of most recent David Weber works, and something that isn't as common in Eric Flint books.


Unfortunately I got pretty soured on the series thanks to that so I didn't read any of the books that have had other authors.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah.

Well, I won't say the others are *great,* but I can promise David Weber had nothing to do with them.

[Zaune]

Is it just possible that this was Weber trying to satirise his own bad writing habits and failing miserably, or am I giving him too much credit?

[keen320]

I wonder if Weber was writing out the book, got to the end, and then realized that there was just no way for humanity to win.

Then I imagine him going to some author's wheel of fortune used to select plot contrivances in just these scenarios.

whirrrr....

"Vampires? I was really hoping for something else, maybe a giant monster or the existence of atlantis, but whatever, I guess I'll just run with it."