From rec.arts.sf.written Mon Jul  6 16:36:40 1992
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!The-Star.honeywell.com!umn.edu!csus.edu!netcomsv!mork!dani
From: dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Subject: R.M. Meluch:  The Queen's Squadron
Message-ID: <5d4lr4_.dani@netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 05 Jul 92 04:18:07 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
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I liked "The Queen's Squadron".  It was a lot like "Sovereign", my 
favorite of Meluch's books -- not high art, not very probable in terms
of plot or characterization, but a decent space opera with engaging
(if not necessarily likable) characters.

(It's also like Sovereign in that the mathematical underpinning --
fortunately completely irrelevant to the plot -- is off.  Meluch
breaks the story at one point to have someone give a space captain
a two-page long beginner's introduction to relativity effects -- with
the Fitzgerald equation wrong.)

It's basically a romance, set against a cataclysmic war we're hardly
shown.  One side has ftl ships -- "the Queen's squadron" -- but the
other side is more willing to engage in unrestricted warfare.  He's
the leader of the squadron, she's the newest hottest pilot, and the
other subplots, for all their intensity, seem to serve primarily as
filler.

One of the better bad books I've read this year.

-----
Dani Zweig
dani@netcom.com

Roses red and violets blew
  and all the sweetest flowres that in the forrest grew -- Edmund Spenser