Privateers
The Grand Tour Series, Book 2
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Privateers
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Narrated by:
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Stefan Rudnicki
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By:
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Ben Bova
About this listen
America has ceded the heavens to the tyrants - and the renegades.
The US has abandoned its quest for the stars, and an old enemy has moved in to fill the void. The potential wealth of the universe is now in malevolent hands. Rebel billionaire Dan Randolph - possessor of the largest privately owned company in space - intends to weaken the stranglehold the new despotic masters of the solar system have on the lucrative ore industry. But when the mineral-rich asteroid he sets in orbit around the Earth is commandeered by the enemy, and his unarmed workers are slaughtered in cold blood, the course of Randolph’s life is changed forever. Now cataclysm is aimed at the exposed heart of America - a potential catastrophe that Randolph himself inadvertently set in motion. And the maverick entrepreneur must use his skills, cunning, and vast resources to strike out at his foes hard, fast, and with ruthless precision - and wear proudly the mantle that fate thrust upon him: space pirate!
©1985 Ben Bova (P)2021 Blackstone PublishingListeners also enjoyed...
Awkward misogyny and fractured plotline
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Learn to walk before you run.🙄
Russians
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The idea of the Grand Tour is fascinating to me and so when I heard about Bova’s series I was initially excited. I wanted to see his vision of the human race as we went from harnessing the power of the Sun to exploring and colonising the entire solar system. But I just can’t get past the writing style. Maybe if I try again one day it’ll be okay but not today.
First I’ll say what I did like about Privateers. The concept is very interesting and if you find asteroid mining and a space pirates interesting then you’ll enjoy this about it. The world building too is very well done. It makes a lot of sense and you could see a lot of what happens in the story happening for real one day. The science is fine, if a little wonky.
Here comes the moaning - I’m sorry.
Privateers in particular is slow and overly complicated and it feels like a story that could have been told in novella or short story form. I don’t think it was necessary to write a whole novel about it. And I understand that this book was written in the 80s so I’ll let slide a lot of the science being a bit outdated as I found Bova had improved his science writing with Powersat which was published in 2005 (and I’d say that book is a lot better but still not great).
What I can’t forgive though is his treatment of women and blatant homophobia and racism. This didn’t change, and continued in his later Powersat.
For some reason every female character needs to either be a damsel in distress or dependent on men for pretty much everything. If a woman is unattractive she’s simply not in the story because apparently every female has to be desirable. Even when he states that a woman is independent I found no evidence to back that statement up. The men in the story are constantly lusting over one woman or another (in this case she’s practically a child and is portrayed very much like a child throughout). And then when it comes to male characters you’ve got the main character who’s your typical American stereotype hero - fit, handsome, womanising, white, and rich. And then every other man is either ugly, fat, or a race Bova has deemed as evil for some reason (Russians in the case of Privateers and Arabs in Powersat which just shows that he’s very much motivated by what’s happening the news when he writes his stories).
I really wanted to like this book. I’m sorry if this is anyone’s favourite book. I’m sure you have your reasons for loving it. It just didn’t agree with me. And I’m sure Bova has written some excellent books and I’ll be sure to try them out one day. Powersat was good right up until the end so I know he can write good fiction. Privateers was just a real struggle for me and honestly I think it’s just bad.
I really wanted to like this.
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if you write a series, learn about consistency
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Poor
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