Jerry Pournelle's Janissaries

I guess this counts as AH given as far as I know aliens are not taking soldiers from earth to another planet to grow drugs. Anyhow, this is one of my favorite series of books, I devoured these books in the 1980s and I have been waiting over 30 years for the fourth book to come out and it finally did earlier this month. Published by the late author's son and David Weber:

 
I'm reading this book right now, and the Janissaries trilogy has always been one of my favourites.
I've to say that Jerry Pournelle was a much better writer than his son (no surprises here: posthumous books are never the same as the ones written by the original writer, and - much to my chagrin - I'm in agreement with good old sir Terry, who in in will decided to have all his notes, unfinished work and plots destroyed after his death).
I've also failed to find much influence from Weber in the book.
It's still readable, and the plot is not bad at all, but the narrative doesn't flow as it did in the original trilogy.
No more then three stars.
 
It unfortunately follows the trend of the entire series. The first book was by far and away the best with each successive book worse than the one that came before it.
 
Finally finished it, quite disappointed. Tried to do too much in the space allotted but then spent what seemed like an eternity describing one large battle. I guess the authors set themselves up to write additional books in this series but I don't know if they plan to and I kind of hope they don't.
 
You're quite right: the authors left a cliff-hanger (which is quite normal, whether they plan to write a sequel or not: why kill the potentially fat goose?) and the description of the final battle was a bit too long (Weber's contribution I guess, but after all Jerry P. also loved detailed descriptions of battles). I do resent the fact that the last couple of pages was copied - almost word-by-word - from the ending of Go Tell the Spartans: some different approach would have been appreciated to set up the new Warlord of Tran.
 
I have the original trilogy too... I think I'll skip this latest entry and keep my generally positive opinion of the OT....
 
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