Re: Vanguard: Declassified Review Thread
It also seems the Apostate did a lot of work for nothing.
My impression, given the way the last scene on the Apostate's planet was structured, was that Bridy Mac is still alive, and will play some role in the acquisition of the Apostate's secrets.
For my part, I most enjoyed
The Stars Look Down and
Almost Tomorrow. What surprised me most about
Declassified, actually, was how much I was moved by
The Stars Look Down. I've always disliked Cervantes Quinn, and have never before been remotely interested in aspects of the Vanguard series having much to do with him (Bridy Mac made no impression on me in previous books). So I was very surprised to be drawn into a story about Bridy Mac and Quinn, and to find myself caring about the fortunes of their lives. A story I dreaded when I discovered whom it starred turned out to be my favorite of the volume.
Almost Tomorrow was a pleasing echo of that which Vanguard has been. I very much enjoyed seeing the early stages of
Vanguard's story, with first meetings and the unfinished roots of the story we'd later read - even if I didn't get everything from the story that I could, not having read Distant Early Warning (which I really wish were available in print on its own, or had been included in this volume). It was a very solid look back.
The other two stories I have less to say for, though I liked aspects of each of them.
The Ruins of Noble Men was generally pedestrian when it didn't involve Hallie Gannon. (The beauty of those sequences, I think, relied heavily on the warm-hearted likability of Fisher.) It also made me dislike Diego Reyes, which I didn't care for at all. He seemed willfully angry and shallow here, a stark contrast with the deliberate, burdened man I remember from earlier books.
Hard News was affecting, but I can't say that I liked it. There is something detestable about Tim Pennington that I don't enjoy. But, more, I felt wounded by the presumable murder of Amity Price. I thought, at first, that she was a character I had forgotten from
Open Secrets, but I couldn't find her in a Google Books search of the
Vanguard volumes. Her isolated life and death leave me bitterly regarding the story. I was moved and upset by her death, but the meaningless of it in the context of
Vanguard offends me emotionally. Most upsetting, I think, is that her death doesn't seem, even, to have affected Pennington beyond his decision to risk everything he had left for T'Prynn. Her death isn't meaningful in itself; it matters, instead, to the main character's relationship with a third character whom he isn't even sure he cares about. It isn't necessarily bad writing, but I don't like it.
On the whole, I'm glad to have read
Declassified. I was disappointed to hear that it would be the third-to-last
Vanguard volume. The story finally seemed to be moving toward the body of a second act (the first running through
Harbinger,
Summon the Thunder, and
Reap the Whirlwind, and the second having begun with
Precipice, notwithstanding the bridging novel
Open Secrets or this collection). I had hoped that the series would conclude in a third.
I do have a question related to the
Vanguard series: How do the more evocative titles originate? I've discovered that
The Bright Face of Danger is a much-used title that seems to have originated with a turn of the century novel by Robert Neilson Stephens, and I think I've tracked down
Night's Black Agents, but I'm curious about some other titles, such as
The Stars Look Down and
The Ruins of Noble Men.
