{"id":160,"date":"2002-08-31T19:18:41","date_gmt":"2002-08-31T23:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=160"},"modified":"2002-08-31T19:18:41","modified_gmt":"2002-08-31T23:18:41","slug":"smith_sherwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/08\/smith_sherwood\/","title":{"rendered":"Smith, Sherwood, and Dave Trowbridge: (01) The Phoenix in Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Space opera!<\/p>\n

To be precise, The Phoenix in Flight<\/cite>, book one of the Exordium series by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge<\/strong>. I’d seen this recommended in conjunction with the Mageworlds books—to be precise, on the web pages of the Mageworlds authors<\/a>—as “if you like . . . ” And so far, I like very much.<\/p>\n

These are all out of print, and a couple of the five volumes are almost legendarily hard to find. With some good luck, I managed to acquire them all over a few months, and now I have the time to read them all at once.<\/p>\n

The Phoenix in Flight<\/cite> is precisely what you would want in a big chewy space opera. In the background, there’s thousands of years of history, humanity spread across the stars, and a scattering of mysterious alien races and artifacts; in the story, there’s betrayals and intricate plots and counter-plots, interesting characters with conflicts of oaths and ambiguous loyalties, space battles and daredevil piloting and things blowing up, and of course fighting in palace corridors (including one of the best uses of household systems I’ve seen). Whew. There’s really nothing like good space opera . . .<\/p>\n

The characters also get really cool names. Jerrode Eusabian, Avatar of Dol, Lord of Vengeance and the Kingdoms of Dol’jhar, has sworn, well, vengeance on the Panarch of the Thousand Suns, the ruler of this section of the galaxy. And, after twenty years of planning, has killed two of the Panarch’s sons, imprisoned the Panarch, and taken the Emerald Throne. Except that two things have eluded Eusabian’s control: a mysterious alien artifact, and the youngest of the Panarch’s sons.<\/p>\n

To be, as they say, continued . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Space opera! To be precise, The Phoenix in Flight, book one of the Exordium series by Sherwood Smith and Dave Trowbridge. I’d seen this recommended in conjunction with the Mageworlds books—to be precise, on the web pages of the Mageworlds authors—as “if you like . . . ” And so far, I like very much. These are all … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Smith, Sherwood, and Dave Trowbridge: (01) The Phoenix in Flight”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,73,15],"tags":[391,416],"class_list":["post-160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-exordium","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-smith-sherwood","tag-trowbridge-dave"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}