I spent much of yesterday sitting in airports and on planes reading David Weber’s latest, In Fury Born, which is an updated version of his older book Path of the Fury. The new book starts much earlier in the history of Imperial drop commando Alicia DeVries, and expands the section based on the older book considerably. Or so the cover blurb indicates; although I’ve read Path of the Fury I found this book almost entirely dissimilar from the few impressions of it that I’ve retained since. I suspect that’s due more to the weakness of my memory (and possibly the weakness of the original book) than to any significant difference between the two.

In a nutshell: Alicia DeVries follows in a long family tradition and joins the Imperial Marines of the Terran Empire. (The emperor’s name is Seamus II of the House of Murphy; the imperial seal is a harp and starships. Nice touch.) It quickly becomes clear that she’s one of the elite, and she’s tapped for a position in the Imperial Cadre, the Emperor’s own. And then some bad things happen, she feels betrayed, and resigns. A few years later (this is on the back cover, so no spoiler) her family is killed by pirates, and she sets off for revenge–accompanied by one of the Furies of Greek myth. (Huh?) Much violence and soul-searching ensues.

The book has some good spots, most of which are in the wholly new material on DeVries’ early career; and, I’m afraid, a great deal of tedium. In my view, he should have filed off the serial numbers and written a whole new book, throwing away the second half for something entirely new. And he should have trimmed mercilessly. One of Weber’s good points as an author is that he shows us what’s going on from all sides. We get to know both the good guys and the bad guys. One of his faults is that great swatches of his books these days consist of drawn-out conversations between people we rarely see in action to fill us in on what those characters have been doing. A little editing, please, Mr. Weber!