Privateers in Exile

I generally enjoy Jamie McFarlanes books but something clearly went wrong with Privateers in Exile – the sixteenth book in his Privateer Tales series. I plan to spend some time examining what went wrong in detail. There will certainly be some spoilers involved in my review so consider yourself forewarned.

Lets start with the good stuff. McFarlane doesnt write the kind of low quality, self-published ebooks that have become so prevalent in recent years. His spelling and grammar are generally quite good. His sentences are smooth and flowing. His dialogue is generally believable. He typically provides enough detail that the reader has a good grasp of what is happening and why things are happening without getting bogged down in details. Much of that is evident in the present book.

Unfortunately, McFarlane wrote himself into something of a metaphorical corner with his last book. His protagonists had finally prevailed over the alien menace that had been threatening humanity and many other species. They achieved rock star status as a result. Their romantic relationships had become happy and stable. They became wealthy and powerful along the way. Their core group of friends had evolved into a supportive, tightly integrated, smooth functioning team. Two of the characters even had a baby. There were certainly some details that could be wrapped up but the author could just as easily have ended the series with and they lived happily ever after. Therein lies the problem.

The truth is that happily ever after doesnt sell books. Challenge and conflict sells books. Character growth and development sells books. Adventure sells books. Big problems sell books.

One obvious problem with continuing the series was what to do with that pesky baby. No reasonable parents are going to be comfortable with dragging their baby into danger. No good parents are going to be happy with the idea of leaving their baby behind for lengthy periods while they run off and have adventures. Potential readers wouldnt be happy if two of the major characters dropped out of the series so they could raise their infant son, Little Peter.

The author decided to resolve this problem by leaving the central character of Liam Hoffman in a stasis pod for twenty years while the baby grew into a man. Of course, an infant cant be separated from his parents for twenty years so Nick and Marny had to be out of their stasis pods during this twenty years to raise him. And, it would be too neat a solution if Tabatha, Liams love interest, was left in stasis for twenty years with Liam so McFarlane also let Tabby out of her stasis pod. We cant expect a hot young woman like Tabatha to remain single all of that time so she has to get involved with the only single man around… Little Peter now grown into a big man.

Lets stop right there. Most of us have an instinctive and major ick reaction with that new relationship. Tabatha is not biologically related to Peter but she has known him since he was born. She has been around him for twenty years while he grew from baby to toddler to awkward teenager to adult. She would have changed his diaper. She would have viewed him as at least something of a foster son. Her cultural values are essentially derived from contemporary Western European and American norms. She has been a good, moral, and strong character for the last fifteen books. The idea that she would end up in a relationship with Little Peter is too big a pill to swallow.

Liams pretty much been the driving character throughout this series so the author eventually had to let him out of his stasis pod. Thats when Liam discovered that Tabby had been involved with Little Pete. This obviously set up a conflict that had to be resolved.

Of course, Nick and Marny have also been out of stasis for twenty years. There have been developments in their lives as well. The smoothly functioning team has obviously been subjected to a great deal of stress. Will it ever fully recover? Maybe down the line but it didnt do so in this book.

Ada was also left in a stasis pod for twenty years. She actually spent a bit more time in stasis than Liam. This results in a situation in which Ada, Liam, and Little Pete are all now relatively young while Nick, Marnie, and Tabby are middle-aged. This creates two potential groups with different points of view to play off against each other in future books. It also creates a number of potential romantic entanglements to explore and exploit. The author freely hinted at these.

All of the action in this book takes place on one planet in one of the satellite galaxies that orbit our own Milky Way galaxy. This was an entirely separate galaxy than the Dwingeloo galaxy in which some of the other books take place. Lets stop right here for a moment while I hit a pet peeve.

Lots of writers who talk about galaxies just dont seem to have a good grasp of what a galaxy is. They dont understand the number of stars in a galaxy. They dont understand the distances between galaxies. They make mistakes because they dont understand these issues and dont take the time to become familiar with the basics. Jamie McFarlane is one of those authors.

Galaxies are darn big things. A galaxy is a very large collection of stars, planets, gasses, etc. Galaxies are very far apart. Even satellite galaxies are very far away from their parent galaxies. How many stars are in a galaxy? How far apart are galaxies? Lets take some concrete examples.

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is estimated to contain somewhere between two hundred billion and four hundred billion stars. Yes, thats billions with a letter b. It has a diameter somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 light years across. Light travels 186,000 miles in one second. At this speed, it takes light 150,000 to 200,000 years to travel from one edge of the galaxy to the opposite edge.

The closest satelite galaxy to our own galaxy is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy. It is about 25,000 light years from our Solar System or about 42,000 light years from the center of the Milky Way. The Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy contains an estimated one billion stars. There are smaller local satellite galaxies but we are still talking about populations of hundreds of millions of stars.

The Andromeda galaxy is the closest major galactic neighbor to the Milky Way. Although relatively close, it is still roughly 2.5 million light years away. It is estimated to contain one trillion stars.

What did McFarlane do wrong? One example occurred when the characters were discussing their desire to contact their friends and families in the Dwingeloo galaxy and mentioned that these people were hundreds or thousands (not hundreds of thousands or millions) of light years away. McFarlane never tells us exactly where Dwingeloo is but a quick Google search shows that the Dwingeloo 1 galaxy is about ten million light years away from Earth. Assuming this is the same galaxy in McFarlanes books, the distances are off by orders of magnitudes. Wouldnt characters who have been space faring for most of their lives be more conversant with the numbers?

Another example occurred when the characters blithely talked about how there were not a lot of metals available within the galaxy they were inhabiting. They specifically mentioned a shortage of iron. They based this conclusion upon their experience exploring (on foot) one small portion of one planet, in one star system, in a galaxy likely to contain hundreds of millions of other stars. This would be like me confidently asserting that the Milky Way is short on metals based upon my experience strolling around my neighborhood.

McFarlane apparently didnt consider the potential consequences of people living for twenty years in an environment that is low on metals. He specifically set up a situation in which people were marooned for twenty years without a spaceship, tools, food supplies, vitamin and mineral supplements, etc. He set up a scenario in which a baby grew to adulthood. He presumably did this in order to limit the modern technology that might be recreated by a smart and technologically sophisticated young man such as Nick but the truth is that the health consequences for the adults would be disastrous. The consequences for a baby would be even worse.

Humans need a certain amount of minerals in order to remain healthy. We especially need iron. As just one example, the hemoglobin in our blood contains iron. It is iron which binds with oxygen and allows our blood to transport oxygen. Without iron, human blood doesnt transport oxygen and humans cant live. All humans regularly lose iron from our bodies. It has to be replenished from our environment. This is routinely worse for women of child bearing years than it is for men because women lose blood (and hence iron) when they menstruate. Children are also especially hard hit by iron shortages. Growing children need to expand their blood volume as they grow. They need iron to do so. The simple fact is that none of the characters would have remained healthy had they lived for twenty years on a planet on which iron was a rare mineral.

McFarlane created additional problems for the characters to resolve in future books. For example, he significantly changed the social and political environment back in the Solar System so that the characters will have lost their rock star status should they ever return home. In the Dwingeloo galaxy, their business, political, and familial relationships have been destroyed. Another alien invasion has once again put people there on the brink of destruction. Would things really have fallen apart to this extent just because these characters were out of circulation for twenty years? Surely there must be other people capable of solving problems in their absence

There are other issues but I think I will just stop here. McFarlanel should have ended the series with And they lived happily ever after. Having failed to do so, he needs to find some way to fix this. The plot outline of the next few books is already clear but I would suggest that this is a big mistake. I have a few specific alternative ways for the author to address the problem.

One, make a formal apology to all of the readers. Retract the existing book. Write a completely new 16th book in the series and pretend this one never happened. Release the new book for free to everybody who purchased the disaster that is the current book.

Two, Liam wakes up in his bed back on the ship and discovers this was all just a horrible dream. Write book 17 as if book 16 never happened.

Three, the characters engage the experimental drive on their spaceship. It somehow rewinds the timeline and none of the events in book 16 ever happened.

These might sound like something of a stretch but McFarlane has revised his universe in the past. His early books were written entirely within the Solar System with space faring characters never making mention of interstellar travel. This eventually became too restrictive. In later books, McFarlane not only introduced interstellar and intergalactic travel but acted as if it had been routinely taking place in the background all along.

My suggestion to potential readers is that they simply avoid this book. There are just too many major problems for it to be enjoyable. This is the kind of circumstance in which people should do what my old economics professor described as bargaining with their feet. When he said that, he meant that people should walk away from a bad bargain and spend their money elsewhere. This book is a bad bargain. Take your scarce and hard earned money and spend it on another book by a different author.

Spoilers ahead.
Love the series but this one just made me angry. This book seems like the whole point was to flip the table over. Forget the aliens who can apparently get anywhere at anytime. The escape pods that had nothing useful in them. And only one person wearing a com or spacesuit on a space ship. Three of the main characters seem to have lost all brain power without Liam there. Genius nick cant do anything but make a knife and a hut for 20 years. Tabby who wanted to wait for marriage for the first 7 books is now ok with booty calls with 17 year olds she helped raise. And badass Marnie is just a mom now. And they are all ok sitting in a clearing for 20 years.
Feels rushed. Felt like the whole purpose of the time jump was just to torture the characters rather than to advance the plot. Maybe the next book will make more sense of it for me.

If your just starting the series you can get past the glaring plot holes and inconsistencies and it will be an ok read. For those of us who have come in from the beginning this is probably the low point of the series.
PLOT SPOILERS from here.
You have arguably the best ship crew in the galaxy and no one puts on their spacesuit but Liam despite every other book making abundantly clear they very seldom wear anything else and have plenty of time to do so. The leading human scientist in the galaxy redesigns one of their former ships putting in FTL drives these require suspension chambers which use the gel system off of the bumblebee fighters but also act as stasis chambers and ejection pods. With all of this money being spent and all this design work only 60% of the pods work as designed. None have any survival equipment such as water filters, med scanners to detect edible vegetation weapons and scanners and com equipment. Even on Earth without the proper equipment they would be suffering serious vitamin and mineral deficiencies Let alone on a planet in another galaxy. While I assume Jamie wants to move the story arc ahead 20 years he now has a crew that older and a lot less able. Marnie is so focused on Peter she can’t remember her grav suit flies Nick is worried about conflict between Peter and Liam, which is a great idea since Peters been Banging Tabby like a bag of hammers. Tabby may have decided on Liam but Liams wearing a gun on his own bridge and I bet he wouldn’t trust Peter behind him with a dull butter knife let alone a real one . Ada tabbys best gal pal asked if she should put her hat in the ring for Liam. While Liam blew it off as a way to get Tabby moving I think she put her on notice that she made her last mistake. Liam also finds he has a Brother back on Mhina and its the son of a man who has had multiple scrapes with liam . Going forward what might happen: I predict another soon to be extinct species if the Mehndari dont straighten up. I think that the abasi that turned on House of the Bold and its allies. might get their tails shaved all the way to their necks and turned into real gunjway. Annino and mommy might get their gonads stuck in a vice until they rejuve Liams 20 year older pals
But whatever happens I hope its good and sticks more to what we have expected out of prior books

I have followed this series since I read the first book, and have looked forward to each new publication. Up until this one, I have enjoyed the series. However, this book greatly disappointed. I did not enjoy the read. What the author did with the character development, aging, and interpersonal relationships really ruined the series for me. I can honestly say that it is doubtful that I will read further books in this series.

Got this with some trepidation s it looked like the story had be finished in the last book. But, as any good story teller, this goes in a new and exciting direction. Loved it from start to finish. You could read this as a separate book as a lot of the back story is filled in as much as needed for a nw reader while not boring those of us who have read the whole series. However, I would say it’s best to start at the beginning and enjoy the world of Liam Hoffen in all its glory.

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