His entry begins:
Rustics in Rebellion/George Alfred TownsendAbout To Clear Away the Shadows, from the publisher:
Townsend was a correspondent from Tidewater Maryland writing for northern papers during the Civil War. He was strongly opposed to Secession but he understood the common people who were doing the fighting--and who were being trampled by being in the path of the armies. He was one of those people himself.
This is an honest account of the civil war by a non-combatant who went where the fighting was so that he could report it. It is full of homely details, like writing a note for an illiterate private to his wife and baby girl before the Battle of Cedar Mountain, who says that he'll write more if he...[read on]
ADVENTURES BEYOND THE EDGE OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSEVisit David Drake's website.
The truce between Cinnabar and the Alliance is holding, and the Republic of Cinnabar Navy is able to explore regions of the galaxy without the explorers being swept up in great power conflict.
The Far Traveller is probing sponge space to open routes for Cinnabar traders—and for RCN warships if war breaks out again. But besides astrogation, the Far Traveller is to survey and catalog life forms on the worlds it touches.
Harry Harper has just been posted to the Traveller. He's an RCN officer by convention, a scientist by training—and a member of one of the leading aristocratic families on Cinnabar by birth.
Lieutenant Rick Grenville would rather serve on a warship in the heart of battle, but peace and the whim of the Navy Board have put himon an exploration vessel instead. He finds that the dangers on the fringes of civilization are just as great as those from missiles and gunfire that he expected to face.
As internal struggles cause the Alliance to relax its iron grip, regional forces are attempting to increase their own power—and they're not fussy about the means they use.
Besides the biological answers that officials on Cinnabar expect the Far Traveller to find, the ship's Director of Science, Dr. Veil, has her own agenda: to learn more about the Archaic Spacefarers who roamed the universe tens of thousands of years before humans reached the stars.
The crew of the Far Traveller is poised to clear more of the shadows away from the deep past than ever before in human history—if they survive.
Writers Read: David Drake.
--Marshal Zeringue
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