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Dominator
- Vicky Peterwald, Book 4
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
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Dominator
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Summary
Grand Duchess Vicky Peterwald has everything. A loving fiance who's soon to be her husband, adoring crowds, and she gets to share her golden wedding carriage with Kris Longknife. What more could a girl want?
Well, the emperor, her father, could have showed up to walk her down the aisle, but she's not really bothered about that. Then, suddenly, she is. It turns out he didn't make the wedding because he's broke and living nearly homeless in an abandoned, half-built palace. How'd that happen?
News isn't coming out of Dad's side of the empire, so it looks like Vicky may need a battle fleet to go pay Daddy dear a visit. Oh, and four or six brigades of infantry and tanks. Somebody should have known better than to piss Vicky Peterwald off. Now they have, and she won't let anything get in her way of being Vicky Peterwald: dominator.
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What listeners say about Dominator
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Robert
- 05-04-23
A superb book utterly ruined by the endings politics…
We all saw it coming, but an otherwise excellent novel was destroyed by the author removing agency from Vicky via the frankly dubious (of otherwise well written) romance with Manny when he forces her - basically through her love for him - to ‘beg leave’ to rule her people.
While the previously described political system of planetary and city charters which granted planets the right to Imperial (and thus Naval) protection seemed very much in keeping with both Vicky, the Peterwald’s and the ‘Imperial’ title, placing the ‘democracy’ one level down from the executive Imperial rule (although there would doubtless be a legislative body) we instead have radical democratic change being accepted and a woman choosing to embrace a (frankly insulting, given all she’s done for them, and this reviewer is British and admired the ‘Wardhaven’ traditions) ‘Constitutional’ democracy because she wishes to award several medals and has been trapped into appearing to do so.
It’s cheap, she shouldn’t accept it and the changes to her character - while charming in the last book and excellent through much of the first eight hours of this book - are showing distinct ‘clones of Kris Longknife’ tendencies. The authorial political bias consistently shows through in many novels, and does so often in this series, and for many sections it’s well written.
But not here.
Further, this isn’t a small change you can ignore, and it isn’t something that needed to happen. It stacks on top of numerous ‘little things’ throughout many of the later books in this series that make me sadly consider not spending money on the next book - which is an incredible, massive shame, as the Vicky Peterwald books are significantly superior in terms of their military and personal perspective content than the later Kris Longknife ones.
It very much feels like the author is losing his grasp on the setting and instead reverting to what he knows best - truthfully, this shows through even in the good content - while Vicky’s mission to the surface of the planet is very different from anything he’s written up until now, and very enjoyable from her perspective (unlike superwoman Kris Longknife, who can out admiral admirals and out marine marines) nothing in this novel is new or different, the Empress’ criminal family is still clearly responsible for most of the insane and stupid criminal excesses in the Empire, because they’re basically criminals - white collar, blue collar, street and organised - and essentially rather stupid and highly, highly violent. They’ve deposed her father, taken over his half of the Empire and are literally and metaphorically raping it.
Vicky and Kris are friends - which is nice, it’s a shame we very well may not see any novels with both of them together at this stage in their lives, given the lack of any recently published books by the author, and makes the somewhat unexpected heel turn Vicky took to start off her own series a little disappointing, but it’s very good to see and nicely written.
It’s also very nice to see the more traditional naval and ground combat expanded with modern technologies such as drones and written out fully, rather than Kris Longknife inevitably being forced to pull a rabbit out of a hat, Vicky takes that innovation and applies it to the tools she actually has to good effect - this frankly is more pleasing and consistent writing.
It is somewhat of a shame we’re not seeing the Peterwald’s / Greenfeld go there own way with the innovations / technologies, I don’t see them developing battlecruisers out of Kris’ received wisdom, and I don’t see Vicky letting them get away with standing still - it would be nice to see them revamp their battleship/big gun heavy navy with 24 inch plus lasers and smart metal hulls. But… I doubt we will see that and if you’re looking for anything more advanced than using smart metal for nanotech, don’t look here - it’s all old school.
If you’re a rabid fan of Vicky Peterwald or the overall series, I would advise you to pick this up - if you don’t mind the overwhelmingly pro-European democratic politics and heavy anti-corporate/anti-Imperial politics, I recommend you pick this up. If like me these inconsistencies really bother you, then you may want to look twice - it *is* only the last little bit of the book, but it will be present in every book afterwards, and you’ll never be able to change how the author has written the character.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- people's bank
- 02-02-19
very disapointing
I've loved all of the authors other books, but this book is to much of the same. 1 book to far
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