March to the Sea

Empire of Man #2

by David Weber, John Ringo, Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

SOME DAYS IT JUST DOESN'T PAY TO
GET OUT OF YOUR SLEEPING BAG.

The successor to March Upcountry

It wasn't so much that Prince Roger and his surviving remnant of elite bodyguards are marooned on a barbarian planet. Or that they have been on continuous operations for so long they are getting shocky. Or that they still have half a planet to cross. Or that they are basically out of ammunition for their plasma and bead rifles and just about out of cash. Sure, those are all problems, but they're not the real problem.

No, the problem is Roger is in love. With one of his bodyguards. And the romance is not going well. Damnbeast Sure. Vampiric moths Okay. Screaming waves of barbarians No problem. But when you have Nimashet Despreaux and Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Chiang MacClintock at sword's point, that's real danger.

And it's just the beginning.

To get to the distant port that is their only way off the planet, they'll be forced to battle enraged monsters, displaced mercenaries, religious fanatics and a barbarian horde to shame the Huns. Along the way they'll have to recreate the Reformation, the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. And do it all in a context their four-armed, horned, grizzly-bear sized native allies can handle.

It will strain all their experience and knowledge, as the most elite, the most multitalented and above all the toughest bodyguards in human space. But the really hard part will be keeping Roger and Nimashet from killing each other.

Genres: Science Fiction, Military Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Audiobook, Fantasy, Military Science Fiction

Audiobook

First published August 1, 2001

About the author

David Mark Weber is an American science fiction and fantasy author. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1952.

Many of his stories have military, particularly naval, themes, and fit into the military science fiction genre. He frequently places female leading characters in what have been traditionally male roles.

One of his most popular and enduring characters is Honor Harrington whose alliterated name is an homage to C.S. Forester's character Horatio Hornblower and her last name from a fleet doctor in Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander . Her story, together with the "Honorverse" she inhabits, has been developed through 16 novels and six shared-universe anthologies, as of spring 2013 (other works are in production). In 2008, he donated his archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University.

Many of his books are available online, either in their entirety as part of the Baen Free Library or, in the case of more recent books, in the form of sample chapters (typically the first 25-33% of the work).

http://us.macmillan.com/author/davidw...

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

The saga of Prince Roger and the stranded elite marines continues in the second volume of the series. The marines, slowly being whittled down by indigenous predators and various armed clashes with the locals, starts off here with lots of distance to go, and many challenges to face. Yet, it seems that every time the group encounters pockets of civilization, something needs to be sorted before they can move on...

I speculated throughout which portions where written by Weber or Ringo, and would put money that Weber lay behind the political parts and Ringo on the action sequences. The marines brought some serious high tech arms and armor, but with only a limited amount of ammo and power, they tend to use these for 'special' occasions. The only exception seems to be their communication gear, largely 'internal' the to marines (implants), but also lots of cool spyware and such, giving them an edge on gathering intelligence.

Well, after all kinds of trials and tribulations, Roger and company finally reach the port city of K'Vaern's Cove, only to find it besieged by a horde of barbarian nomads. All they want is to build some ships to sail over to the next continent, but a. the locals deny it can be done, and b. they do not have the material to build ships due to the siege...

Reading this calls to mind another saga, Into the Storm (Destroyermen) by Anderson, Taylor (2009) Mass Market Paperback, where WWI era US Destroyers fleeing the Japanese invasion of the Philippines were suddenly in a parallel Earth with no humans around, only Lemurs, who evolved into one of the intelligent species on 'Earth'; the Destroyermen were forced to build an industrial society quickly due to threats from the Grik, and each volume detailed that. Here, the marines draw upon their collective knowledge to teach the 'proto' industrial natives how to make cannons, rifles, and such, to beat the barbarian hordes. You really have to dig the detail involved here, or you will probably find it really boring!

Like its predecessor, March to the Sea gets pretty 'windy' at times and meanders around quite a bit between the bursts of intense action; if you are familiar with either of these authors, that should come as no surprise. Nonetheless, I liked the detail at times (or you might say, lectures on how to make different types of steel for example), and the action sequences rock and roll. Solid follow up to be sure! 3.5 bloody stars, rounding up!

[Choko · Rating 4 out of 5]

*** 4.35 ***

This series is turning better than I expected!

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still good but not as fresh and original as March Upcountry. A lot of plowing of previously plowed ground.

[apple · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, Roger...Didn't your empress mommy dearest ever tell you that the fastest way to a girl's heart is through the ranks of four-armed hostile alien enemies, preferably with your laser canon blazing? So quit moping around already. We want to see more actions in the next book! --- And I can't really tell one Mardukan from another. They kind of look the same (duh, being from the same species but still), talk the same and have names like something out of an IKEA catalog

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Step 2 complete but at such a cost.
Now to cross an uncharted sea, with ship killing monsters to land on an unknown continent and fight to the star port and the dream of home.

[Debrac2014 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read! Interesting to watch the advancement of the scummies technology!

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Series continues...mass battles of our "heroes" trying to get into a position to get home. Still readable.

The best part of this (these) book (books) is arguably the battle scenes. The general idea is that we have a spoiled young princling who ends up stranded in a life threatening situation. Will he rise to the occasion or manage to get his entire body guard killed?

Not a bad series, I read it at a time of stress in the hospital waiting room and it kept my mind busy.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

2020: No matter how many times I relisten to this series, I'm always crushed when things go wrong, jubilant when they succeed, and in stitches at some their antics. Still an all-time, all-genre favorite. Narrator Stephen Rudnicki rocks my world.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

05/06/17 re-read 4th time. So good.

[Ralph Schäfer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dieses Etappenziel wurde zum Glück ohne Verluste bei den Marines erreicht. Man hängt ja inzwischen an so manchen Figuren.

[Erica Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is huge. Unnecessarily so. And if I wasn't listening to it as an audiobook (19 hours!), there is no way I would have finished it. I read and enjoyed March Upcountry, which is the first book in the trilogy. March to the Sea is more of the same, except now we already know all of the characters. And they do all the same kinds of things they did in the first book, without much in the way of character development. So, a humungous cast of characters that I couldn't keep straight, a conflict between the good guys and the "barbs," and a series of battles that go on for days (both fictionally and literally, since it took me over a week to get through the forty-plus chapters).

I suppose readers who are very interested in weapons engineering might find this book of interest, since there is a lot of detail about how the marines are modifying weapons for the upcoming battle. The character of Roger does develop a bit as a leader, but the authors had already redeemed him in Upcountry. There is a tiny bit of development of the romance between Roger and Despreaux, and one major character is lost to a crocodile- like creature.

There. Now you don't have to read it unless you really want to.

Yes, Weber needs an editor with a heavier hand. This is not news.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can I give it 6 stars, or 100 stars? Hubs and I love this series, especially on audio. Incredible narrator. Fantastic authors. Great storyline. On to #3, March to the Stars.

2019: I might have knocked off a star for some protracted detail, but it's important to the journey so I'm leaving my rating at 5 stars. Fabulous series and narrator.

[Joe Jungers · Rating 4 out of 5]

The next leg in Prince Roger McKlintock's epic journey across the planet Marduke.

[Don Dunham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manstuff

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for Sept 2024 bkgrp.

[minz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointed. Everything was long winded and way too much detail. It appeared that the author wanted to put every bit of his research into the book instead of simply telling a story. Even the exciting fight scenes were drawn out in excruciating detail to a point I almost did not finish. It simply did not draw me in, make me feel connected or even give a crap.
The first book of the series they did not break out the heavy weapons even when they figured they were dead and this book they broke them out even thought they were not required.

[S Swan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to say it. This is my favorite book! ... or rather... this is my favorite series....
The book might begin a little slow, seem like it's introducing a lot of unnecessary characters, but trust me, it speeds up plenty fast, and just keeps going, and some of my favorite characters are the "minor characters" introduced in the beginning.
This set of three books (the beginning of the Empire of Man series) reads like a single book which was sliced into sections for the sake of size. You know how every time you pick up the next book in a series, you wonder how long after the last one it starts, what fantastic problem could possibly befall the characters THIS time (how much bad luck can characters possibly have?) And then you realize that you almost don't want to read the next book, because the last one was sooo perfect, you don't want to corrupt it with new blood, but you just can't help it. Well, have no fear! There isn't even really one of those long explanations periods (for all the idiotic people who start the series with the last book) which covers seemingly all of the history of the fictional world. The transition is seamless. The only jump is from the third one to the last one, but it goes back over it. I suppose because of this I would recommend reading all of the books in a row, with as little pause as necessary.
P.S. after you've read all of them, I would recommend going and back and rereading AT LEAST the beginning scene of the first book with the Empress.

[Dixie Conley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sequel to March Upcountry, this book follows the further adventures of Prince Roger, as his bodyguards struggle to get him across the untamed wildness of the planet Marduk and back to civilization. This book is basically a series of running battles, leading up to them reaching the sea and building boats to cross it, but not actually crossing it.

While, as I've mentioned before, David Weber can write battles in such a way that I find them readable, there's just so much fighting in this book that it becomes overwhelming and toward the end of the book, I just started to skip parts of it. The book does have its contributions to the series, in that in starts the romantic relationship and there's an important character death (amid all the unimportant character deaths that typically happen when you read a series that's mostly about various kinds of battles). And I rather liked the bit about the female alien who organized the sealift from an embattled city, but to a certain extent, this book feels just a little like filler.

[Matt aka · Rating 5 out of 5]

March to the Sea is the second book of the series by David Weber and John Ringo about Prince Roger McClintock and his royal bodyguards who get stranded on a backward alien planet. This time around though he has become a leader in both name and in reality. His group has made it across the continent only to be under siege by 100,000 barbarians hell-bent on destroying everyone in there way. But nomads with axes are no match for plasma rifles, powered armor or artillery.

Read how they bring a whole city together to stop the hoard from destroying them all. I listened to this complete audiobook over just a few days and enjoyed the military strategies and combat methods that the authors' included in the book. I give this book five out of five stars.

If you liked this review I have over 50 more book reviews on my website Fantasyworldwriter.com Please also signup for my newsletter.

[Rene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the Marine characters(what few remain at the end). But the overly explanatory chapters, giving you background, was almost too much, and almost caused me to abandon this book (and possibly the series) altogether. it's the lengthening through exposition that made me abandon Honor Harrington after "War of Honor". I also agree that the majority of Mardukians are essentially throwaway characters .

Battle scenes were almost chaotic but gory fun; I'm glad there were maps, though.

I'm giving three stars, I'd liked to give three and a half for the characters and action, but the option is not available to goodread users. I'll read the last two books to have s sense of completion. here's to hoping that it works out.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powered armor, plasma cannons, spacecraft, political intrigue, plots, and betrayal. Deadly bloodsucking creatures and barbarian hordes on a tropical paradise planet in the backwaters of known space. Interesting perspectives on personal technology, with its own unique applications and pitfalls. What's not to love?

Excellent book, much action, lots of research and information on the topics covered, many references for readers to catch, a well developed environment, with great characters, superb character development, and a very skillfully crafted story. As an added bonus, if you listen to the story in audiobook format the narrator is very very good.

[Chris Weakley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second book in this series, you start to see the characters mature a small amount which I would lay more at the feet of David Weber than John Ringo. It is another in my line of Popcorn easy SciFi. All in all a good book, but it doesnt wrestle with any startling themes and the characters are pretty predictable.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may deserve one more star, but since I'm reading it right after March Upcountry, I went with 4. It is more of the same, which is what I wanted, but as such I couldn't get as excited about it. Fun read, good story.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened - stefan rudnicki is the bomb

[Bill Chaisson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't think I would sit down and write a review of this book because I thought it would be just more of the same as the first installment, March Upcountry. But it wasn't. In the second volume of this tetralogy the number of different Mardukan societies multiplies many fold and the amount of internal contemplation of life's complexity expands to page and a half chunks at time of characters just standing there thinking about stuff.

All this contemplation is broken up at intervals by some rip-roaring action of various types, but usually creatures attacking or pitched battles. Those contemplative intervals may be a little long for those readers who lack a fascination with military strategy and hardware or who do not have the patience for amateur cultural anthropology done by soldiers.

David Weber and John Ringo have imagined a very complicated planet filled with societies at various stages of cultural development and dogged by a very challenging climate and some treacherous geography and wildlife. This alone makes the book entertaining. But they go further than that and create and then develop some quite believable characters with whom one cannot help but empathize.

Prince Roger MacClintock gets a lot fewer column inches in this volume because he grew up in the first book and is now a bona fide warrior who just needs some experience and refining. We get to know Capt. Armand Pahner much better, although he still remains tantalizingly out of reach, as a good leader should. We are allowed to share the complexity of his thinking but are told little of his emotional life and less about his past.

We meet a Mardukan called Grindi Fain in a city called Diaspra, where he works as a laborer in the public works. Dragooned into military service, he rises rapidly in the ranks because the Marines can see that he is smart, brave, and a natural leader. Weber and Ringo have the Mardukans picking up all manner of human mannerisms and expressions, and Fain picks them up faster than most. It goes the other way too, as the Marines begin to mimic Mardukan ways.

Many of the human ways are deadly. Weber and Ringo have created a world in which humans are technologically superior but also much more advanced in any activity that requires cooperation. They imply that we are like this because we have to be just to survive. On Marduk the environment is the biggest challenge faced by the inhabitants. The implication here is that the biggest challenge faced by humankind is other members of humankind. Kill or be killed.

Much of the plot ofMarch to the Sea has to do with the Marines helping the Mardukans of Diaspra and Kvaern's Cove defeat a barbarian horde that has overrun their region. It is pragmatism not altruism that causes the Marines do to this; they need to get the necessary materials out of Kvaern's Cove to make ships to travel across the ocean to the space port that is their only way off Marduk. Of course, in Weber and Ringo's "killers with hearts of gold" world, none of the Marines can help learning to respect the Mardukans and empathy grows along the way.

Military sci-fi is still not my thing, so I had to the strong tendency to blow through the long explanatory passages in March to the Sea that were essentially about how to kill things efficiently or dimestore sociology with an unacknowledge conservative political bent. For me the books are salvaged by the creation of well realized characters whose emotional lives do have some nuance.

[Contrarius · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one about as much as book 1, March Upcountry. Lots of good battles and battle strategy, horrors of war, maturity through the experience of violence, and so on, and enough character work to keep me interested, even if most of those characters aren't exactly rounded. And I was relieved that Roger didn't actually turn into a Gary Stu (at least not yet). Sure, he has become somewhat super-competent in some ways, but he still makes mistakes and has a lot of self-doubt and anger at times. Oh, and notice the title. Book 1 was March Upcountry, an homage to Xenophon's Anabasis in both title and theme, and this one is March to the Sea, similarly an homage to Sherman's famous/infamous March to the Sea during the Civil War -- a march that has been described as "a targeted strategy aimed to break not only the Confederate army but an entire society as well", which is exactly what Our Heroes do here.

I gotta say -- while the authors might both be experts in military matters, they sure as heck don't care much about biology. For one thing, they kept talking about the natives having balls -- but those natives are supposed to be cold-blooded, and cold-blooded animals don't have external genitalia (the main reason for male mammals to have external equipment is to keep it below body temperature, which in mammals is too high to be healthy for the sperm). Other similar problems abounded, including conveniently forgetting that the natives are twice the humans' size when they're all sitting together at dining tables and things like that. But biological/physical accuracy is not really what a person goes into these sorts of books looking for, so just squint a little and try to ignore those issues. ;) And similarly, once again the natives are just primitive humans -- I do wish they had been more alien.

Also, this one could've been shorter. Book 2 is only a couple of hours longer than book 1, but I had the feeling that a bit of snippage wouldn't have hurt anything. Oh, and in the audio version, Stefan Rudnicki sings at the end! Made me go sniff -- nice voice, and poignant ending.:(

All in all, a fun read -- and I do want to see what happens next. We've been promised sea monsters! I'm giving this about 3 1/2 stars, rounding up.

[Ozymandias · Rating 3 out of 5]

The necessary problem with this series' plot is that it requires constant movement. The marines can never stay in one place too long if they want to fight their way back to their base and that means any glimpses of foreign civilizations are of necessity brief. We will never see most of the people from the last book again.

What distinguishes this book from the last one is that the technology level leaped up a notch and we're looking at an army of riflemen vs. the barbarian hordes. The marines are basically there as advisors and communicators. And of course Roger is learning to lead as well. By this point there are basically no marines left, which makes everything harder.

The whole civilization vs. barbarian theme is back from the last book. I have to say that I found it depressingly obvious and unnuanced. The "barbs" are there to appear in overwhelming force and then die decisively after charging repeatedly into deathtraps. I should stress that none of the groups this is based on did that. Mongols and Huns most assuredly retreated in the face of insurmountable odds and major battle casualties. Uncomplicated they may have been in many ways, but they were not stupid. And being explicit about calling them barbarians (a term that's falling out of use due to the exact connotations that appear here) is irritating. This sort of situation requires a little more subtlety. That's not this book's strong point.

What is the book's strong point is military conflict and tactics. Absurdly successful the heroes may be, it's still fun to see how tech gets adapted to different situations. And the higher technology level means that we get to venture a bit past the noble savage stereotype. I like seeing how civilization differs for a separate species, even if I could do without some of the lecturing.

I liked this book a lot while I read it. It's only looking back that I realize I have little to say.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
Once again Prince Roger MacClintock and his company of bodyguards fight their way across a continent, mowing down hordes of four-armed aliens as they go. They're trying to reach this remote planet's only spaceport, but to do that with limited resources they end up tangled up in local politics and wars.
Roger, once a spoiled man-child with no idea of his place in the universe, has been forced to grow up fast in the unforgiving atmosphere of a jungle planet whose sentient peoples' technology level is about late medieval--they are just beginning to develop black powder weapons--and whose fauna all seem to be dangerous. Roger's natural charisma and leadership abilities are surfacing with a vengeance while his self-doubt is steadily eroding away, which is good, because hazards of the planet are doing a good job of whittling down his troop of marines. There aren't as many human deaths in this second book (there's starting to be not that many left to expend) which means there isn't as much redshirting as there was in the previous book, March Upcountry.
March Upcountry was slightly better paced; there was a lull in the middle of this book while preparations were made for a big battle and for the upcoming voyage across the ocean between them and the spaceport. Weber and Ringo certainly do write action sequences with superb skill, however; it's easy to picture everything as it happens.
There is some uncomfortable borderline racism that carries over from the first book, so if you got this far without it bothering you too much I assume you're still good to go here.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book by David Weber and John Ringo. It is full of scientific (science fiction and science fact) details, as well as military, tactical, weaponry, sailing, and civilization details. There was nothing that stuck out to me that was out of place, except that the included maps are horrendous. They are not necessary in order to follow the story, however. As a longtime student of civilizations and player of Civilization games (1-5), plus several military and tactical real-time strategy games, I enjoyed this immensely. I felt an enormous respect for Roger and especially for the Marines and civilian humans traveling with him. They are good people I would want on my side, ethical and thoughtful, as well as people not afraid to take action and prompt in doing so. Very impressive.

[Greg Gann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not my first time with this series. I think this series is okay. However, if it hast a fault, it is in the theme.

The political subtext is a bit obvious and over simplified. One side, the good guys -- The Empire of Man -- have a strong military ideal and push law and order. The bad guys -- The Saints -- have an extreme ecological ideal somehow wrapped into a religion. (I'm sure any correlation to real world politics is purely coincidental.)

Any time the Saints are brought up, it is pointed out how their policies are failing, exploitative or simply hypocritical. So much so, I occasionally wonder how the Saints manage to keep a multi-planetary government functional.

Other than that, this series is a sci-fi shoot them up with good military background.