On the need for the writer to have a hide like a rhino
The reviewer at Challenging Destiny did not like TP. Putting up a link seems an exercise in masochism, but it's easily enough found. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of review the writer can learn much from, because his issue was with fundamentals, our "feudal society in space" and the story we chose to tell. It just didn't work for him, and after a fair summary of the book, he said so. Not much one can do with that but listen respectfully and stand by the society we built and the story itself; if we didn't believe in it ourselves, we wouldn't have written it.

Well, Ranar had the same problem with the sword thing. Guess some people won't believe it until they visit Gelion. :-) Good time to remember that someone slammed Marie for her history and hated J.K. Rowling's take on magic. Personally it is Earth-style militarism in space that I have always found hard to swallow. The cost and fragility of colonies suggests to me that if we ain't going out there if we don't solve the war problem. Even planets won't be safe if we're still into mass murder as a defensible lifestyle by the time we have easy access to space travel. But no one complains about shoot 'em ups in space as implausible from a short term economic or long term survivability of the species point of view. I guess I always knew, though, that "swords in space" would not go down well with some people no matter how carefully it is justified sociologically or how interesting it is as a metaphor for our on-going preoccupation with the imperatives of the last millenium as we grop our way forward into the next one.

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