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  • Though Hell Should Bar the Way

  • RCN Series, Book 12
  • By: David Drake
  • Narrated by: Victor Bevine
  • Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (9 ratings)
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Though Hell Should Bar the Way

By: David Drake
Narrated by: Victor Bevine
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Summary

A new novel in the nationally best-selling RCN military SF series.

David Drake, dean of military science fiction, returns with another entry in his best-selling RCN series.

From wealth and power to poverty and insults!

Roy Olfetrie planned to be an officer in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, but when his father was unmasked as a white-collar criminal he had to take whatever he was offered.

What is offered turns out to be a chance to accompany Captain Daniel Leary and Lady Adele Mundy as they go off to start a war that will put Roy at the sharp end.

Duty snatches Roy from the harem of a pirate chief to a world of monsters, from interstellar reaches in a half-wrecked starship to assassination attempts at posh houses. Roy has the choice of making friends or dying friendless; of meeting betrayal and responding to it; of breaking his faith or keeping it at the risk of his life.

Pirates, politics, and spies - and, waiting for Roy if he survives all the rest, a powerful warship.

The action doesn't slow - nor can Roy, for if he does the only question is which of the many threats will be the one to catch and kill him. But Captain Leary himself has given Roy a chance, and Roy is determined make the most of it - Though Hell Should Bar the Way.

©2018 David Drake (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about Though Hell Should Bar the Way

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    5 out of 5 stars
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THE Great RCN series from a new perspective

I really enjoyed looking in as it where totheworld of Leary/Mundy and I found the story a real "page turner" metaphorically speaking.
if you like RCN book i think this one, although different, is a really great addition to the series.
Highly Recommended

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

An Oblique Approach

Daniel Leary and Adele Mundy are back, for the twelfth book in the RCN series! Except, well, David Drake has taken what he might call "an oblique approach" this time, and our two main characters are very much on the sidelines. Sure, they have a mission - but we have a new character centre stage, and he narrates the story - his story. At first this works well, as Roy Olfetrie encounters Daniel, and joins his crew (helped along by him being a cousin of Daniel's wife), so we see characters from a new perspective... but a few chapters in, he gets shanghai'd, captured by pirates, and sold on a far-away planet which has a touch of the Arabian Nights about it, with harems, slaves, eunuchs... He wants to escape, but he sees, via closed-circuit surveillance, a girl who was also abducted and sold to the harem...

Personally, while this section of the book was pretty well done, I did end up feeling that it was going on too long - I wanted to get back to what Daniel and Adele were involved in, not have another twist and turn in the escape, and the voyage in a not very well-maintained pirate ship. We did get back there eventually, to find, in a rather large coincidence, that the girl was important to the mission, and got back on track, with some suitably dramatic action on the planet and in space.

It looks as if Roy won't be a permanent member of Daniel Leary's team, as he ends up with a new role, which could well be classed as a happy ending. Let us hope for further RCN novels that get back on the main track. We could even go over the same mission again, but from the normal perspective! If you've not tried David Drake's RCN series before, it would probably be best to begin at the start rather than here, but it's still an entertaining adventure on its own.

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