alaterdate | Hell's Gate

Finally finished Hell's Gate by David Weber & Linda Evans. 1208 pages with a cliffhanger ending. I already knew this book was put out as set-up for the rest of the series, but the premise was too good to pass up.

Two civilizations discovered portals that lead to uninhabited planets, all of them copies of Earth. They explore, and plunder, and move into these copies. Arcanum has been doing this for 200 years while Sharona has only had 80 years of exploration. Then one day portals on their respective sides lead them to the same Earth and they discover other humans for the first time.
Two soldiers standing on opposite sides meet in a forest—each shocked to see a stranger and wary of the weapons in each others hands—kill each other and no one will ever know who shot first. Despite having peaceful First Contact protocols an act of cowardice and fear leads to a massacre.
The Sharonian's guns are weapons never before seen by Arcanans and when they decimate an entire squad in the blink of an eye the Arcanans can't help, but to retaliate... with dragons. Yes, Sharona is a civilization built on science while Arcanum is built on magic.

Arcanum explicitly has magic, but the way it manifests is incredible. People Gifted with magic can use energy found naturally in the world to power their spells. Spells exist in the form of directions given to objects to perform a function. Basically spells are software that run on physical objects. They have these crystal orbs that they store their spells in called "Personal Crystals," yes... PCs. It's hilarious and kind of brilliant, I love how magic works in this book. Even their dragons are a product of having used spells to discover genetics and map out how to breed/create the creatures for specific roles (transportation and/or battle). They can even write programs (spellware) and download them to other people's PCs. Incredible. The Gifted can manifest raw energy like a bolt, but we only see that briefly and they mostly use it in conjunction with their crystals. The fact that they aren't on the front line in the army tells me that they don't really lob fireballs like we imagine magic users do, but they mostly create weapons and tools for intelligence gathering (including magical creatures).
Sharona on the other hand is more of a steampunk-type world. They understand physics and have meticulous machinery. One surprise is that Sharonians have their own special abilities called Talents, but they are all of the PSI variety (telepathy, remote viewing, clairvoyance). It kind of makes them seem more magical since these are abilities we don't have in real life as opposed to computers.
I have an inkling that these abilities are not actually restricted to each society.

Half of the story follows Arcanum soldier Jasak, Arcanum Mage Gadrial, and Sharonian explorers Shaylar & Jathmar. The other half follows the political machinations on both sides leading up to a war between the two civilizations. For me the best parts of the book were when it was following Jasak and Gadrial taking Shaylar and Jathmar (the only Sharonian survivors of the massacre) to the Arcanum capital. The relationship that unfolds between these four characters is where all the characterization lies. Everyone else felt one-dimensional which became even more exasperating as more and more characters were added to the story. By the time a definitive villain shows up he's completely obvious then it jumps into his pov and his thought are so comical like "heehee I am so evil and no one suspects a thing."

Jasak was my favorite character because he is the one who has to take a lot of risks and weigh his actions against his own society. He's the son of one of the most powerful nobleman on their planet, but he's not very high in the army. So on one hand he has very little power (being low in the army), but people also see him as powerful and resent him anyway because he's from a prestigious family. He risks his standing to protect Shaylar & Jathmar from being tortured and is the most levelheaded in the army about the discovery of another civilization. He presents himself as stoic, but he's a sweetie. I really enjoy the tension between his desire to be a good person and his duty to his country.
My second favorite is Shaylar, she's what's called a "Voice" which is a person with telepathic powers and though she's not able to read minds exactly she can read a person's feelings/intentions pretty well enough to basically know what they are thinking. The main function of a Voice is communicating with other Voices by sending and receiving memories(messages) and they perform the function of telephones (landlines though, they can only be a certain distance away from each other to send messages) in their society. So through her we get a lot of introspection not only on herself and her situation, but how other characters are reacting. I think she's a strong character because she tries to be so understanding and she's smart about piecing together what information she can collect through her power.
Gadrial one of the most powerful mages in Arcanum and the co-founder of a prestigious magic university. Her mentor is the other founder and another of the most powerful mages. Together they invent spellware that pinpoints new portals manifesting in whichever world they are currently using the spell in. Gadrial and her mentor are the reason the Arcanum army sends men into the portal where they come across the Sharonian's who were also exploring that world. She's alright. I like that she stands up to some of the military guys when they're being assholes and her friendship with Shaylar is cool, but she's just... nice? and that's all.
Jathmar is Shaylar's husband and fellow explorer. His Talent is a kind of remote viewing which is great for exploring unexplored Earths, and why he and Shaylar were out on expedition. He hikes out and senses the terrain and she draws maps based on the memories/impressions she gets from him. Even though he's not a Voice Shaylar is able to get good impressions from him because they're married and in Sharona this gives them a special psychic bond. His entire personality is "wife-guy" and he's my least favorite. It was cute in the beginning, but his "rivalry" with Jasak is annoying. He adds the least to the story and has interactions with no one, but Shaylar. Even his issues with Jasak are never expressed toward Jasak, it's just Shaylar reading him. He's boring and the more I dislike him the more, yeah, I do want him to get cucked by Jasak. Definitely not going to happen though, Shaylar respects Jasak, but she has no other feelings for him.
The rest of the characters might as well not exist to me, I just didn't care about people who were introduced 300+ pages into the book.

The prose was good and easy to read. Whenever I picked it up I breezed through multiple chapters, which is great for a 1208 page book. The only issue I really had with this book was too many asides about the world for my tastes. I like worldbuilding details when they are directly related to the plot or have some bearing on a character's actions. Jasak invoking a cultural right to demand Shaylar and Jathmar become his wards? Cool! Describing the entire genealogy of the world's horses? No thanks! The horse thing, it's one thing to mention that people from one of the cultures need bigger horses because they have bigger frames, that tells me that those people are taller and bigger than everyone else in the scene, it also tells me some unsaid things about the evolution of horses itself, I didn't need the subsequent pages about horse genealogy!!!

This series debuted in 2006 and had some rough patches with it ending with 3 volumes, with the third and final volume published in 2016 with a differnt co-author. I only have the first two books in my possession. I flipped through the second one to get a feel for the plot and oof, it barely moves. Halfway through its 632 pages Jasak and co. are still on their way to the capital. I won't be reading the rest of the series, but it's not a bad book. I just don't forsee the rest of the series actually covering subjects I'm interested in. I enjoyed both sides being puzzled about what they each brought to the table and implications concerning Gifts and Talents being utlized in/against the other society (Arcanum politicians being read for filth by Sharonian Voices who relay bad vibes to their bosses via hand signals is awesome lol), but the plot is moving way too slow with way too many asides for me.