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Book Review: Sins of Her Father
Capt. Catherine Blackwood is back. The captain was the central character in Mike Kupari’s space adventure Her Brother’s Keeper. Sins of Her Father brings Blackwood and her privateer spaceship into a new science fiction story.
Ithaca, a colony world, has been beset by inept revolutionaries for nearly a generation. After overthrowing the previous monarchy they have run the planet with staggering incompetence.
In desperation, they are turning to the Orlov Combine for assistance. The Orlov Combine is what you would get if you multiplied Soviet Russia by Nazi Germany. It treats its people like cattle, but it has promised, pinkie swear, it will respect Ithaca’s internal sovereignty if Ithaca joins.
When the Ithacan revolution started, Zander Kycek was its leader. He won the war through an act so brutal he was forced into exile. He left his daughter behind. She is now part of a group seeking to stop Ithaca from joining the Orlov Combine — launching a second revolution to overthrow the current government. She wants her father to return and help lead the fight.
Kycek is willing to return, but he is on Heinlein, a planet far distant from Ithaca. If he takes a passenger spaceship Ithaca’s government would kill him. They tried to kill him while he is on Heinlein. He needs a warship.
Catherine Blackwood and her ship, Andromeda, are on Heinlein, having finished expensive repairs and adding new crew to replace the casualties from her previous engagement. Providing armed passenger service is not work she normally does, but work is scarce and she needs employment. She agrees to take Kycek to Ithaca.
Blackwood and Andromeda have their own history with the Orlov Combine. It wants Blackwood and Andromeda destroyed. It also wants Kycek dead. Blackwood’s mission evolves as a result. Plus, Ithaca is not inhabited only by humans. It has sentient natives, who are willing to fight the existing government alongside the human anti-Orlev faction.
Sins of Her Father offers a fast paced and exciting story. Kupari weaves together a complex series of threads to form as entertaining an adventure as his first.
“Sins of Her Father,” by Mike Kupari, Baen Books, 2018, 352 pages, $16
I write a weekly book review for the Daily News of Galveston County. (It is not the biggest daily newspaper in Texas, but it is the oldest.) My review normally appears Wednesdays. When it appears, I post the review on Ricochet on the following Sunday.
Published in Literature
“On Heinlein”. Does that have a double meaning?
Sort of, kind of. It is a name of a planet, and it has a free-market, libertarian government. Probably a tribute to the master, from an SF writer who likes RAH.
I was thinking of “on Heinlein” of being something like “on drugs”.
I think his thing was more from a stroke than drugs. 😜
Do people write science fiction stories with male main characters anymore?
My next SF review should answer that question.
Yes.
Of course, one of the best stories with a female protagonist was written by or before 1957.
I liked Honor Harrington for a while, before Baen died, and no one edits Weber any more.
I like traditional male leads. They seem to be more rare these days.
Try David Drake’s Republic of Cinnabar Navy series. Starts with “With the Lightnings“.
Thanks will do!
The Man of War series by H. Paul Honsinger is pretty good as well. It’s been described as “The Hunt for Red October mixed with Master and Commander, in space!” The first book in the series is To Honor You Call Us.
Not only is the main character male, every character is male! (There is a good SF reason for this.)
Of course I am just a big sexist for wanting to have a male hero.
And I am a grammar nazi for insisting that a hero must be male:
male => hero
female => heroine
I was not, in anyway, trying to imply that anyone here, Hank especially, was calling me sexist. I am sorry to have given that impression. It was a joke against me, and the idea that every character in a story was male was a good time (I thought) to make fun of me.
Sorry Hank.
I was not, in anyway, trying to imply that anyone here, Hank especially, was calling me sexist. I am sorry to have given that impression. It was a joke against me, and the idea that every character in a story was male was a good time (I thought) to make fun of me.
Sorry Hank.
No problem, I (mis-)read it when I was bone tired (seems like most of the time nowadays) and PMed for clarification. Sorting out this stuff without the verbal and facial cues isn’t always easy. I’m incredibly sarcastic in real life and have been misinterpreted so much online due to the lack of a smile/smirk/grin accompanying my remarks too.
And to move things closer to the topic at hand, I really enjoyed that book’s lack of a romantic B plot cluttering up the space action.
I’m very tired of everything I read/watch/listen to being larded up with very generic romantic B plots in inappropriate circumstances. “The fate of the world is at stake, but does he/she like me?” — and variations thereof annoy me to no end. I have issues with female leads because the silly romance stuff seems an order of magnitude worse when the lead is female. Because of that I rarely read books with female leads absent a strong recommendation.
So my question for Seawriter is, does this Sins of Her Father book/series throw in the usual generic or pointless romance plots?
Not really. There is one romance, but it is peripheral to the main characters, and necessary to advance the plot.
Eric Flint 1632 series
SM Stirling Change series. First 3 or 4.
EC Williams Westerly Gales series
More alternate history than pure sci fi but there’s still a lot from the 1950’s I haven’t read or not in a long while. And take a look at amazon UK for some others. Or Abe Books ships from uk sellers. Different takes.
It seems like an interesting story but I get turned off by lazy, un-original things like naming the ship Andromeda when there has already been a popular program with a ship of that name or just a gross lack of originality in character names like Zander and Catherine. It might seem nit-picky but it just makes me wonder if I’ll be annoyed by every little detail because the author is just mailing it in with other details as well.
Obviously replace “game” with “story”.
I can sympathize with the Andromeda thing, since it can be done cleverly or (more usually) poorly.
The names thing I don’t really get. Why is it bad to use names in common use now? Some names come and go, but others like John have been in common use for centuries. No one has to wonder how to pronounce those names either.
Thanks, Seawriter.
I loved Kupari’s contribution to the Dead Six series, so this is on the list.
Get Her Brother’s Keeper, too. It is the predecessor to this one.
Wilco.