Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collections
Publication
Baen (2007), Mass Market Paperback, 864 pages
Description
Imperial Intelligence couldn't find them, the Imperial Fleet couldn't catch them, and local defenses couldn't stop them. It seemed the planet-wrecking pirates were invincible. But they made a big mistake when they raided ex-commando leader Alicia DeVries' quiet home work, tortured and murdered her family, and then left her for dead. Alicia decided to turn "pirate" herself, and stole a cutting-edge AI ship from the Empire to start her vendetta. Her fellow veterans think she's gone crazy, the Imperial Fleet has shoot-on-sight orders. And of course the pirates want her dead, too. But Alicia DeVries has two allies nobody knows about, allies as implacable as she is: a self-aware computer, and a creature from the mists of Old Earth's most ancient legends. And this trio of furies won't rest until vengeance is served. In Fury Born is a greatly expanded new version of David Weber's popular novel Path of the Fury, which has gone through six large printings in its original mass market edition. David Weber has added considerable new material, revealing the earlier life of Alicia DeVries before she embarked on her mission of vengeance, and illuminating the universe of the original story. The result is a novel with almost twice the wordage of the original, and a must-buy for all David Weber fans.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member stardreamer
Path of the Fury has always been my favorite of Weber's books (yes, even over Honor Harrington), so when I saw this one -- labeled as a revised edition of PotF plus a novel-length prequel -- I had to grab it.
Nor was I disappointed. The prequel is what I expected it to be: the backstory of Captain
It's hard to classify this book as SF or fantasy. The setting and most of the action is good old-fashioned space opera, taking place in Weber's Terran Empire. But the Fury in the title is one of the Erinnyes of ancient Greece, which gives it a solid push in the direction of fantasy. Overall, I tend to think of it as SF; the magical element isn't enough to overwhelm the rest of it. Captain DeVries herself is a protagonist in much the same mold as Honor Harrington (including being a prodigy to a degree that rides the ragged edge of unbelievability), but with less personal involvement in politics -- this is straight action-adventure from beginning to end. There's a rich background tapestry of secondary and incidental characters, and enough technobabble to sound realistic without descending into the depths of relating interminable engagement details.
Now that Weber has his character and this particular section of the universe a little more fleshed out, I'm rather hoping that he'll write a sequel or two about Captain DeVries' further career. If you like strong female protagonists who kick ass and take names, you'll certainly enjoy this book.
Nor was I disappointed. The prequel is what I expected it to be: the backstory of Captain
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Alicia DeVries' military career, first as a regular soldier and then as a member of the Imperial Cadre, including full details on the two major engagements alluded to in PotF. The revisions to PotF itself are relatively minor: a couple of added or changed scenes, and otherwise mostly bringing the language and the details into harmony with the storyline from the prequel -- for example, some minor characters now have names, when the original book referred to them only by description. If you don't have the original PotF, you won't be missing anything by just getting this book; and if you do, it's still worth the purchase price for the prequel alone. It's hard to classify this book as SF or fantasy. The setting and most of the action is good old-fashioned space opera, taking place in Weber's Terran Empire. But the Fury in the title is one of the Erinnyes of ancient Greece, which gives it a solid push in the direction of fantasy. Overall, I tend to think of it as SF; the magical element isn't enough to overwhelm the rest of it. Captain DeVries herself is a protagonist in much the same mold as Honor Harrington (including being a prodigy to a degree that rides the ragged edge of unbelievability), but with less personal involvement in politics -- this is straight action-adventure from beginning to end. There's a rich background tapestry of secondary and incidental characters, and enough technobabble to sound realistic without descending into the depths of relating interminable engagement details.
Now that Weber has his character and this particular section of the universe a little more fleshed out, I'm rather hoping that he'll write a sequel or two about Captain DeVries' further career. If you like strong female protagonists who kick ass and take names, you'll certainly enjoy this book.
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LibraryThing member SimonW11
apparently this is an extension and rewrite of a shorter work. the first and newest part is pretty standard Military SF. Then the heroine is possesssd by one of the Furies and The whole thing becomes a space opera. No complaints Better than watching Big Brother that is for sure.
LibraryThing member mcegan
Expansion of the original paperback, with 32 new chapters added to the beginning, and some changes to Ch 33/Ch 1. I'm glad to have the beginning stuff, but transisition isn't seamless despite the changes.
LibraryThing member michaelbirks
As a massive fan of Weber's "Path of the Fury", I felt that this book, which expands the story to include Alicia DeVries' early career, was unnecessary padding out of story.
We didn't need the Shallingsport and Louvain missions laid out before us in the excruciating military minutiae that Weber is
My personal opinion was that this was written in the era when Baen would have printed Weber's laundry list if he'd submitted it to them. Compare this and the bloated 'Ashes of Victory' (2002) and 'War of Honor' (2005) with the much more tightly edited 'Mission of Honor' from 2012
We didn't need the Shallingsport and Louvain missions laid out before us in the excruciating military minutiae that Weber is
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infamous for: Those wonderful few paragraphs in Chapter 6 of _Path_ ("they held they held they _held_ until the recovery shuttles came down like the hands of god") were entirely sufficient to give us the visceral, emotional impact without diluting the taut, vengeance driven story of the present.My personal opinion was that this was written in the era when Baen would have printed Weber's laundry list if he'd submitted it to them. Compare this and the bloated 'Ashes of Victory' (2002) and 'War of Honor' (2005) with the much more tightly edited 'Mission of Honor' from 2012
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LibraryThing member ConalO
This book is somewhat of a hybrid, classic David Weber military SF for the first half of the book and then picks up a fantasy (horror?) theme in the second half of the book with the introduction of a being from greek mythology and possession of the main character. The action is fast and furious
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throughout the first half of the story as we see Alicia Devries reach her full potential in the military. I was at first a little confused regarding the direction of the story with the introduction of the Fury character but I kept reading and it really finished with a bang. I would recommend this book to anyone who has enjoyed the Honor Harrington novels. Show Less
LibraryThing member Karlstar
I read this one without reading the preceding book. It felt like a complete novel to me, which it is, but if you've read the first one, you will find some of the material is very familiar to you. It might be better to read just this book. While the technology is now somewhat dated, I really enjoyed
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this as a sci-fi novel. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy reading Weber's military sci-fi. This is more of a space opera than I expected, complete with pirates, fleet to fleet space battles and even a few aliens, though the action is all human vs. human. The action centers around one exceptional individual, Alicia DeVries, following her career from teen to the end of the novel. Good, fast paced action with some intrigue and politics thrown in. There is a even a little mythology thrown in, which was a little strange but he made it work. Good stuff. Show Less
LibraryThing member scottcholstad
Man, I love David Weber's books! He really knows how to write action packed sci fi novels. I admire and enjoy that.
In Fury Born has a 4.19 out of a 5.0 rating on Goodreads, which is pretty darn good, but you'd never realize it by looking at the most recent reviews, many of which are pretty savage.
Alicia DeVries seems destined for a military career from a young age. She listens to her retired military grandfather tell war stories and her parents fret. She turns out to be brilliant and goes to college quite early, I believe at 14, graduating at 17, before then joining the Marines, which probably disappoints her parents. In one of her first roles as a Marine, she acts as a sniper for her squad and methodically kills tons of bad guys in a bad skirmish. In fact, she distinguishes herself so well, that she's recruited away to become a part of the Imperial Cadre, the best of the best, the Emperor's own military force, where there is a cap of some 40,000 soldiers (in a universe of thousands of worlds with billions of people) and where they can't even meet that standard. The Cadre is bad. They're augmented, turned into types of human robots with internal computers and medical abilities, and something called the "tick," which slows things down and enables one to enhance their abilities to do just about anything. They're fierce. In her first action, Sergent DeVries is sent with a company of some 274 Cadre drop commandos to raid a place, only they drop right into a setup. The bad guys are waiting for them and weapons rip right through them. There are hostages they're there to rescue, some 600 of them. Alley and her company lose their commanding officers immediately and it becomes apparent that she's the last remaining officer, even though she's brand new. She rallies her remaining troops to her and they push through to their target, suffering horrible losses, but giving out horrible losses in return. They make it to the building housing the hostages and gather them together, waiting for Marine reinforcements. Out of the 274 Cadre personnel who went in, nine come out. Alley is one of them. Over 800 bad guys died. For this action (or for the next one -- I forget, sorry), she's given the highest military award there is. Only three living people have it, and one of them is her grandfather. She's the third. She's now a living legend, particularly after this next action I won't go into for time and length of review purposes.
Now, however, it's become apparent to her that there's a leak from inside the Cadre to the bad guys and she knows where it's coming from. They're always one step ahead of the Cadre waiting for them. Turns out it's an intelligence officer, a colonel I think, who she goes to confront and pretty much destroys before guards can pull her off of him. The thing is, she could have killed him with one punch, but she wanted him to suffer, so she broke just about every bone he had. As a result, she's told by her hero and friend, the Brigadier Sir Arthur Keita, that this man is going to be essentially retired, but not punished, as the powers that be don't want bad publicity. She's horrified and immediately quits the Cadre.
Whew! That's a lot. But the book's only half over. She returns to her parents' world out in the boonies and is out hunting one day when some pirates who have been terrorizing the various worlds out there descend and kill her family. She returns to find them there and goes freakin' insane, slaughtering all 23 of them and vowing vengeance upon those who ordered this. She was badly injured in the firefight and is lying in the snow in subzero temperatures when she hears a voice in her head asking her if she'd like vengeance. She said yes. She's asked if she'll give anything for it and she agrees, so at this point, in chapter 33, Tisiphone, one of the old Greek Furies, enters her head and vows to help her, keeping her alive for days and keeping her hate alive at the same time. Alley is found and brought to a hospital where she's heard talking to no one at all, Tisiphone. They think she's crazy. She's transferred to a military hospital, where Sir Arthur and her old best friend from the Cadre, now a doctor and a major in the Cadre, join her in an effort to help her. She tells them everything, along with an intelligence specialist. They think she's probably crazy, but that she believes she's telling the truth. Who knows, right? Well, Tisiphone spends her time digging into computer systems and learning. At some point she tells Alley it's time. Time to go seek vengeance. She helps Alley escape and they go to an airfield, where they barely get away and then to an orbiting space yard, where they snag a state of the art war ship with a state of the art AI, which the human pilot, Alley, has to synth mesh with. This is frightening, because in many cases, upon separation, both human and AI go insane, so this is permanent.
The goal is to find the pirates. To do this, they disguise the ship as a freighter and decide to become smugglers in an effort to find their way to the people dealing with the pirates and their stolen goods. The odd thing about the pirates, though, is that they're not really stealing that much. They're slaughtering people by the millions and not taking much. Why? They daring the fleet to come looking for them. And how are they getting so close to these worlds without warnings being sent away upon sight? Turns out they're in Navy fleet ships. A lot of them. They're traitors, and they go deep into the empire. Traitors everywhere. Alley gets closer and closer. The intelligence agent is on her trail. The brigadier is trying to keep abreast of things. Where will everything lead? The whole universe thinks that Alley is a crazed lunatic who has assaulted Cadre personal, stolen an expensive Navy ship, is armed and dangerous, and has a shoot on sight order. How is she going to get out of this?
Well, I'm not going to give away the ending of the book, but it's very exciting and very climactic and very satisfying. I only have two complaints. One is, as with all of Weber's books, he has to name each and every major and minor character one encounters in the 900 pages, thus making it impossible to know who the hell is who, as you're trying to remember hundreds of names, as well as names of dozens of planets. It's annoying as hell. Especially since about half of these people get blown to hell in a dozen pages. Did we really need to know their names and titles? Was that really necessary? My brain can only hold so many names at one time. The second complaint is the book is hard sci fi for the first 32 chapters and then, without warning, in the 33rd chapter we have this fantasy element appear in Tisiphone -- out of the blue -- and then she plays a hugely major role for the rest of the book. It's jarring. If she had been introduced earlier in the book, it would have been easier to take, but to get a major character halfway through? Well, that's stretching it.
Still, it's a very, very good book. I kept turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next. It was that exciting. Even though it's long as hell, I'm sure I'll read it again. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I strongly recommend it.
In Fury Born has a 4.19 out of a 5.0 rating on Goodreads, which is pretty darn good, but you'd never realize it by looking at the most recent reviews, many of which are pretty savage.
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Apparently it's because this book is based on an earlier book he wrote which contains the second half of this book. What he did with this book was write a 450 page prequel to turn it into a near-900 page beast of a novel, all of which I enjoyed as I hadn't read that earlier work. So no complaints from me.Alicia DeVries seems destined for a military career from a young age. She listens to her retired military grandfather tell war stories and her parents fret. She turns out to be brilliant and goes to college quite early, I believe at 14, graduating at 17, before then joining the Marines, which probably disappoints her parents. In one of her first roles as a Marine, she acts as a sniper for her squad and methodically kills tons of bad guys in a bad skirmish. In fact, she distinguishes herself so well, that she's recruited away to become a part of the Imperial Cadre, the best of the best, the Emperor's own military force, where there is a cap of some 40,000 soldiers (in a universe of thousands of worlds with billions of people) and where they can't even meet that standard. The Cadre is bad. They're augmented, turned into types of human robots with internal computers and medical abilities, and something called the "tick," which slows things down and enables one to enhance their abilities to do just about anything. They're fierce. In her first action, Sergent DeVries is sent with a company of some 274 Cadre drop commandos to raid a place, only they drop right into a setup. The bad guys are waiting for them and weapons rip right through them. There are hostages they're there to rescue, some 600 of them. Alley and her company lose their commanding officers immediately and it becomes apparent that she's the last remaining officer, even though she's brand new. She rallies her remaining troops to her and they push through to their target, suffering horrible losses, but giving out horrible losses in return. They make it to the building housing the hostages and gather them together, waiting for Marine reinforcements. Out of the 274 Cadre personnel who went in, nine come out. Alley is one of them. Over 800 bad guys died. For this action (or for the next one -- I forget, sorry), she's given the highest military award there is. Only three living people have it, and one of them is her grandfather. She's the third. She's now a living legend, particularly after this next action I won't go into for time and length of review purposes.
Now, however, it's become apparent to her that there's a leak from inside the Cadre to the bad guys and she knows where it's coming from. They're always one step ahead of the Cadre waiting for them. Turns out it's an intelligence officer, a colonel I think, who she goes to confront and pretty much destroys before guards can pull her off of him. The thing is, she could have killed him with one punch, but she wanted him to suffer, so she broke just about every bone he had. As a result, she's told by her hero and friend, the Brigadier Sir Arthur Keita, that this man is going to be essentially retired, but not punished, as the powers that be don't want bad publicity. She's horrified and immediately quits the Cadre.
Whew! That's a lot. But the book's only half over. She returns to her parents' world out in the boonies and is out hunting one day when some pirates who have been terrorizing the various worlds out there descend and kill her family. She returns to find them there and goes freakin' insane, slaughtering all 23 of them and vowing vengeance upon those who ordered this. She was badly injured in the firefight and is lying in the snow in subzero temperatures when she hears a voice in her head asking her if she'd like vengeance. She said yes. She's asked if she'll give anything for it and she agrees, so at this point, in chapter 33, Tisiphone, one of the old Greek Furies, enters her head and vows to help her, keeping her alive for days and keeping her hate alive at the same time. Alley is found and brought to a hospital where she's heard talking to no one at all, Tisiphone. They think she's crazy. She's transferred to a military hospital, where Sir Arthur and her old best friend from the Cadre, now a doctor and a major in the Cadre, join her in an effort to help her. She tells them everything, along with an intelligence specialist. They think she's probably crazy, but that she believes she's telling the truth. Who knows, right? Well, Tisiphone spends her time digging into computer systems and learning. At some point she tells Alley it's time. Time to go seek vengeance. She helps Alley escape and they go to an airfield, where they barely get away and then to an orbiting space yard, where they snag a state of the art war ship with a state of the art AI, which the human pilot, Alley, has to synth mesh with. This is frightening, because in many cases, upon separation, both human and AI go insane, so this is permanent.
The goal is to find the pirates. To do this, they disguise the ship as a freighter and decide to become smugglers in an effort to find their way to the people dealing with the pirates and their stolen goods. The odd thing about the pirates, though, is that they're not really stealing that much. They're slaughtering people by the millions and not taking much. Why? They daring the fleet to come looking for them. And how are they getting so close to these worlds without warnings being sent away upon sight? Turns out they're in Navy fleet ships. A lot of them. They're traitors, and they go deep into the empire. Traitors everywhere. Alley gets closer and closer. The intelligence agent is on her trail. The brigadier is trying to keep abreast of things. Where will everything lead? The whole universe thinks that Alley is a crazed lunatic who has assaulted Cadre personal, stolen an expensive Navy ship, is armed and dangerous, and has a shoot on sight order. How is she going to get out of this?
Well, I'm not going to give away the ending of the book, but it's very exciting and very climactic and very satisfying. I only have two complaints. One is, as with all of Weber's books, he has to name each and every major and minor character one encounters in the 900 pages, thus making it impossible to know who the hell is who, as you're trying to remember hundreds of names, as well as names of dozens of planets. It's annoying as hell. Especially since about half of these people get blown to hell in a dozen pages. Did we really need to know their names and titles? Was that really necessary? My brain can only hold so many names at one time. The second complaint is the book is hard sci fi for the first 32 chapters and then, without warning, in the 33rd chapter we have this fantasy element appear in Tisiphone -- out of the blue -- and then she plays a hugely major role for the rest of the book. It's jarring. If she had been introduced earlier in the book, it would have been easier to take, but to get a major character halfway through? Well, that's stretching it.
Still, it's a very, very good book. I kept turning the pages to find out what was going to happen next. It was that exciting. Even though it's long as hell, I'm sure I'll read it again. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I strongly recommend it.
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LibraryThing member aadyer
A very long, but largely accessible military science fiction novel and adventure story. In an age old trope, this centres around the loss of innocence and the madness and badness of the world. Intriguing characters are let down by the bizarre thought Of an Irish space Empire in the future, and when
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Emperor Seamus arrives, it’s almost laughable. It’s a pity, as it removes plausibility from it, and makes in tongue in cheek. This dichotomy between hard science fiction and humour, I found grating. Show Less
LibraryThing member zjakkelien
I can't quite give this 4 stars. I'd go for 3.5, but GR doesn't do halves, so it had to be 3. I did really enjoy it, but I felt it had some issues with pacing. There were some technical aspects of the battles that I didn't really follow, and I didn't want to put the effort in either, because it was
However, I did really like the characters. I'm glad I read the long book, so that I could get to know the background and the characters better. Without that I think it would have been too much at once. The overall story was good as well, world building quite ok, and somehow having a special ship and a magical whatever in her very special head was entertaining.
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a little boring. I had some problems focusing on the politics in the first part of the book as well, but at least I felt that paid off in the end because it was needed to understand the resolution. Aside from that, I also thought the ending was a bit easy, and maybe there are a few too many special things about Alicia deVries. Oh, and there were too many names, some of them difficult to remember, and often I didn't have to, because the associated character died a few pages later. However, I did really like the characters. I'm glad I read the long book, so that I could get to know the background and the characters better. Without that I think it would have been too much at once. The overall story was good as well, world building quite ok, and somehow having a special ship and a magical whatever in her very special head was entertaining.
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Language
Original publication date
2006
Physical description
856 p.; 6.74 inches
ISBN
1416521313 / 9781416521310
Local notes
Fury
DDC/MDS
| Fic SF Weber |