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Books by David Drake
The Legions of Fire
by David Drake
· published 2010 · read 2020-07-20
★★★★☆
The Legions of Fire is Historical Fantasy: It takes place in Ancient Rome while Tiberius is emperor, only that Rome is called Carce, so that Drake doesn't get punched by history nerds. Though the history nerds would have just about zero reason for punching him – Drake majored in history (with honours) and Latin, and it shows in loving background details. All other names stayed the same as in our history – Gaul, Carthage, Germany etc, even Octavianus Augustus, so I didn't quite see the point of calling it Carce. Either do Rome, or go the Codex Alera route.
With the Lightnings
by David Drake
· published 1998 · read 2021-07-04
★★★★☆
Being a fan of both the Vorkosigan Saga and of the Lord Peter Wimsey books, it's no surprise that I enjoyed this book a ton. Explicitly a scifi take on the Aubrey/Maturin series, Lt. Leary is a perfect crossover between swashbuckling adventure fun and scifi – though it's really more "adventures in space", similar to the Vorkosigan saga.
Lt Leary, Commanding
by David Drake
· published 2000 · read 2022-04-20
★★★★☆
All the Lt Leary books are the same: Go to a place under the assumption of ordered action (or usually even a peaceful unimportant diplomatic mission), shit explodes, and it gets heroically solved by Daniel Leary with impeccable manners, thanks to Adele Mundy's librarian/spy superpowers with her data unit and some hacking. You don't see me complaining (yet) though – what works, works. It's a ton of light-hearted fun. I wish we had less need to get reminded of both of the protagonists' primary characteristics all the time (Daniel can only swagger so much while being the perfect rogue-gentleman with a side interest in xenobiology, and Adele can only be a perfectly correct socially and militarily awkward superspy, before the reader yells "I GET IT"). However, we finally meet Daniel's hypercompetent politician sister, Deidre, who is all sorts of cool and gets Adele her ancestral home back, which I was surprisingly invested in. Simple is great when it works. This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.