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PvK said:
Yes, you're right. So far I've been quite willing to forgive and drift through to the tactical parts.  Another criticism I have is with some of the political/cultural/economic attitudes and seeming principles of the author, which seem to me on the simplistic side and more applicable to pre-21st-Century Earth than to the far future. But again, I'm not bothered much because I'm in it for the combat!  I'm only up to book #5, though.
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Yes, there is a strong tendency for "science fiction" authors to be decidedly retro politically. I'm not sure if its some sort of natural corollary of imagining how societies 'evolve' -- maybe it's easier to just stop trying to think of what an "advanced" society would be like, and go with a known simple form of government/culture so you can get on with the scifi?
Some are worse than others. Heinlein was pretty ghastly at times. Many of his stories (the early ones) are good despite this. Most of the later ones are just trash, simultaneously pornographic and propagandistic. Larry Niven and David Pournelle aren't much better on their political views but write much more consistently good stories. Asimov was much more progressive. His 'Foundation' series is actually an honest attempt to tackle the problem of 'advancement' of civilization, not just adventure for its own sake. Bradbury is somewhere in the middle (The Martian Chronicles, for example, are basically just traditional American short-stories, transposed from the Midwest to Mars... neither 'rightist' nor 'leftist' but just naturalist, realistic about human nature.
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David Weber seems to be politically in the Heinlein tradition: There is a certain cadre of 'smart' people who ought to be left alone and allowed to rule the rest of us dummies who don't know enough to take care of ourselves. The political stereotyping is sometimes annoying, but as I said, the rest of the story is so good that it's a forgivable fault.
Re: OT: Books and such
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