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Seas of Venus #2
The Jungle
The planet Venus, after the terraformers finished work and life on Earth ended, was a hell of aggressive mutations, the land and seas turgid with ragingly lethal lifeforms. Humankind lives in domed undersea Keeps--and only the mercenary naval troops called Free Companies venture to the surface to wage the Keeps' proxy wars.
Ensign Brainard and his men, their flitterboat wrecked by a dreadnought's main-gun salvo, are about to face the worst enemy on the planet--The Jungle.
Written in the universe created by Henry Kuttner in Clash By Night.
Ensign Brainard and his men, their flitterboat wrecked by a dreadnought's main-gun salvo, are about to face the worst enemy on the planet--The Jungle.
Written in the universe created by Henry Kuttner in Clash By Night.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 15, 1992
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98 people want to read
About the author
David Drake
307 books888 followersDavid Drake is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. A Vietnam War veteran who has worked as a lawyer, he is now one of the major authors of the military science fiction genre.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 27, 2015
Drake builds on the world created by Henry Kuttner and has a lot of imaginative fun with an ecosystem mutating out of control from the sun's harsh radiation. Since the chances of survival for Ensign Brainard's hovercraft crew seemed slim, I had to know how it was going to turn out. I didn't like all the flashing back to the histories of the stranded crew. If you can keep track of how it all fits together, you can enjoy a uniquely dangerous jungle adventure.
April 29, 2019
3.3/5
So there are two stories in this; the majority of this book is the titular Jungle by David Drake, written in the same universe that was created by Henry Kuttner in his novella, Clash By Night, which takes up the final 80 or so pages of this edition.
Drake's Jungle is all over the place, dedicating half of each and every chapter to the present goings-on of a group of mercenaries whose war-damaged flitterboat crashes on the shores of a Venus jungle; and the other half of each chapter to one of the mercenaries' past exploits before (and maybe after?) the incident. For this reason, it's a bit hard to follow at times. They'll be battling a giant grasshopper that's fleeing from a Venus scorpion for four pages and then suddenly the higher commanding officers will be in a debriefing room or something, talking about who fucked up badly enough for all of this to happen, and who acted well in the line of duty. It's a poor structure to follow for a whole 200 pages, as eventually it begins to get a little exhausting.
The main adventure itself is a fine, pulpy get-out-of-the-living-jungle-that-has-evolved-to-kill-every-living-thing-ever kind of adventure, impeded with constant flashbacks that ultimately do nothing in service of the main story--they're just filler.
Kuttner's Clash by Night is thankfully a lot more straightforward, detailing the adventures of Captain Brian Scott as he prepares for an impending battle with a rival mercenary outfit that has been commissioned to destroy the underwater colony he's tasked with helping protect with the help of an immature commander and a 'cinc'. The characters really don't matter. Death is as common an occurrence in this world as litter in the streets is to us. Life outside of the military is dull and uneventful; may as well be a prolonged, agonizingly slow death. At least with the military, you're bound to die a lot faster, with at least some semblance of a reason worth dying for.
I thought Kuttner's writing was better here because it went straight to the point without a single flashback to slow things down, and he manages to write a climactic battle sequence that is interesting without blowing it up to fifty or sixty pages on its own, limiting descriptions to operators telling us who died or what happened to whatever vessels or subs under the constant salvos of death raining down on both sides. It was neat.
All in all, this was a decent read, but probably not a good introduction to Drake's work, since he's written plenty of stories that have looked interesting to me. Unless of course he incorporates the half-n'-half storytelling format in all of his books... in which case, I may have to clean out a number of books on my Kindle bookshelf. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.
So there are two stories in this; the majority of this book is the titular Jungle by David Drake, written in the same universe that was created by Henry Kuttner in his novella, Clash By Night, which takes up the final 80 or so pages of this edition.
Drake's Jungle is all over the place, dedicating half of each and every chapter to the present goings-on of a group of mercenaries whose war-damaged flitterboat crashes on the shores of a Venus jungle; and the other half of each chapter to one of the mercenaries' past exploits before (and maybe after?) the incident. For this reason, it's a bit hard to follow at times. They'll be battling a giant grasshopper that's fleeing from a Venus scorpion for four pages and then suddenly the higher commanding officers will be in a debriefing room or something, talking about who fucked up badly enough for all of this to happen, and who acted well in the line of duty. It's a poor structure to follow for a whole 200 pages, as eventually it begins to get a little exhausting.
The main adventure itself is a fine, pulpy get-out-of-the-living-jungle-that-has-evolved-to-kill-every-living-thing-ever kind of adventure, impeded with constant flashbacks that ultimately do nothing in service of the main story--they're just filler.
Kuttner's Clash by Night is thankfully a lot more straightforward, detailing the adventures of Captain Brian Scott as he prepares for an impending battle with a rival mercenary outfit that has been commissioned to destroy the underwater colony he's tasked with helping protect with the help of an immature commander and a 'cinc'. The characters really don't matter. Death is as common an occurrence in this world as litter in the streets is to us. Life outside of the military is dull and uneventful; may as well be a prolonged, agonizingly slow death. At least with the military, you're bound to die a lot faster, with at least some semblance of a reason worth dying for.
I thought Kuttner's writing was better here because it went straight to the point without a single flashback to slow things down, and he manages to write a climactic battle sequence that is interesting without blowing it up to fifty or sixty pages on its own, limiting descriptions to operators telling us who died or what happened to whatever vessels or subs under the constant salvos of death raining down on both sides. It was neat.
All in all, this was a decent read, but probably not a good introduction to Drake's work, since he's written plenty of stories that have looked interesting to me. Unless of course he incorporates the half-n'-half storytelling format in all of his books... in which case, I may have to clean out a number of books on my Kindle bookshelf. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that.
June 14, 2023
I enjoyed this book a lot. I enjoyed Kuttner and Moore’s stories about this world, though they left the dangerous jungles mostly unexplored. It’s cool to see that environment take the spot light. This is an exciting adventure with lots of action (which Drake writes very well). The characters are interesting, and I thought the backstory elements added a lot to my investment in their journey. The structure of frequent flashbacks of different characters woven throughout the main adventure can be a bit complex at times, but I didn’t find it a major problem.
August 7, 2023
I enjoyed this book a lot. I enjoyed Kuttner and Moore’s stories about this world, though they left the dangerous jungles mostly unexplored. It’s cool to see that environment take the spot light. This is an exciting adventure with lots of action (which Drake writes very well). The characters are interesting, and I thought the backstory elements added a lot to my investment in their journey. The structure of frequent flashbacks of different characters woven throughout the main adventure can be a bit complex at times, but I didn’t find it a major problem.
August 30, 2021
Picked up on a whim, and fun monstrous sci fi, but I would not recommend or read again
February 3, 2024
This was ok. The premise was interesting, but the back and forth through the history of the different characters lives didn't always work for me.
April 15, 2015
This is another fine sf adventure novel by David Drake. It's a good companion piece to his novel Surface Action. Both are written in the sprit and style of 1940's adventure sf, the kind of stories that were found in Planet Stories. Set on the Venus that Henry Kuttner (writing as Lawrence O'Donnell, perhaps in partial collaboration with his wife, the great C.L. Moore) created, this volume also includes Kuttner's novella, "Clash by Night." It's good, exciting stuff all around.
April 20, 2014
If you can keep focused on what's going on in the jungle, it's a great military survival adventure. If you get confused by the flashbacks and backstory or lost in the different characters...well welcome to the club, we have hats and jackets.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews