Death of Wisdom was the first of three books for the TNE universe written by Paul Brunette. The book was published in 1995. It is now out of print, but may be found on Ebay time to time for about $10,-

The books main Character, Coeur D'Esprit is a survivor from the final war which brought down the Third Imperium. She is rescued from low berth by RC operatives. She enter their service as an tactics teacher as she has experience with starship battles.

However we as readers will not hear little by her experience of adapting to a new reality where everything is far more different than she probably expected when she first escaped into deep sleep after a chatastrophic missjump. Some more information about the main character after her awakening and her feelings about the new universe around her would have been nice and probably also made the character more interesting. On the other hand, the book gives very good information about how the life is in the RC and how they work. We meet several important characters and we also get a impression on how the coalition members are regarding each other.

The plot itself is quite straight forward and easy to follow. The story itself doesn't give you any surprises and is quite predictable. But this does not diminish the story in itself as it is pretty well written without getting into the levels of Jerry Pournelle or Heinlein.

The book itself is quite well written, however, there is several things that I feel si inapropriate to have in the book as references to tech levels. These are meta game information and not very usefull outside of a scout service in most cases. And how tech levels rate will be quite different from place to place anyhow. There is several other references to meta game information that holds little information for a casual reader unless he is well versed in the Traveller universe. But as most books written for a gaming universe it is firstly written for the gamers and not for the casual reader. And for the casual reader it is a glossary in the back explaining several of the game specific details.

For those who plays in a NE setting this book will give a valuable view into the game universe that the rulebooks doesn't give. It is also a good source for adventure for Traveller GMs regardless of  version and setting played.

On a scale from 1 to 10, where 10 is the best I will give it a weak 7.

Comments

redzone

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I'd agree. Irregardless, it is part one of a trilogy. I noticed GDW have the first two novels available through your favorite RPG e-book site. The third book was never published, though the author, Paul Brunette, posted the third book "The Backwards Mask" online. I'll upload the copy I have to the "Misc" section of Downloads for those interested.

Thursday 03 December 2009, 22:04

DogStar

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I found both books to be abysmal. The characterizatio n was non-existent and the plot incredibly thin. Certainly not worth reading let alone paying a premium price on e-bay for.

Friday 22 January 2010, 13:28

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