This started out great. From the alien viewpoint. Reminded me a lot of Zahn's Conqueror Trilogy.

Then it seemed to turn into either historical info dumps, or else evolutionist biology. Either way, boring.

The mother of demons is the historian of the human group. Who is tormented by guilt that she must show the younglings the secrets of warfare in order for them to survive.

So, while it was enjoyable, nothing in it made me want to read more of Mr. Flint's writing. ( )

Mother of Demons is, among other things, an interesting take on a first contact situation. The story takes place on an alien planet and we start off reading from the perspective of a few of the different alien characters. We soon learn that a small group of humans has crashed on the planet, and we spend quite a bit of time reading from the perspective of one of those human characters. The aliens are split up into many clans and tribes and, not surprisingly, they don’t all get along very well. Throwing humans into this mix makes things even more interesting.

The aliens are quite different from humans – more like gigantic mollusks, in various forms. I especially enjoyed reading from the perspective of the alien characters when they encountered humans for the first time. However, since I personally haven’t spent a lot of time hanging out with mollusks, I had trouble sometimes with visualizing the alien characters described in the book. I liked the story a lot, but the images it produced in my head were pretty blurry.

I thought this book had a lot of depth to it. It dealt with topics such as prejudice, friendship and love, loyalty, military strategies, biology, and a heavy dose of history. The main human character was a historian. A lot of the time spent from her perspective was spent considering human history from a wide variety of time periods and geographic regions with a particular focus on its military history. While the reader spies on her thoughts, she considers how situations on the alien planet parallel different situations in history, and how the humans’ actions could affect things over the long term.

As much as I enjoyed the story, I did think the book had some dry parts. I’ve never been a history buff, and there were several passages that referred to a large variety of historical events in rapid succession without providing any details. These passages usually meant next to nothing to me. The parts that had more meaning to me were the parts where a single historical event was chosen and elaborated on enough for me to understand the relevance and appreciate the point the author was making. Coincidentally, I’m about to start a history course for school. Although my course only covers a comparatively small segment of history in a single geographic region, I’m sure at least some of the things I learn in the course would have helped me appreciate passages of this book better if I had read it after taking the course.

I liked the characters in the book a lot, especially the alien characters. I liked the human characters too, but the main human character annoyed me sometimes. It seemed to me like, in her attempts to take the long view, she ended up being rather short sighted. I believe she was the only human character from whose perspective we were permitted to read. She might have seemed a bit less tiresome if we could have spent time in some of the other humans’ heads instead. But I really enjoyed the alien characters. Their culture was interesting and well fleshed out. I also enjoyed the interactions between the aliens and the humans. ( )

Better than I expected.

I originally chose this only because Eric Flint is the founder of Baen Free Library, and I suspected it may have been because he couldn't get his work published elsewhere - normally an indicator that it isn't worth reading. However I was pleasantly surprised.

The opening premise is not that original - a cold sleep ship en route to founding a new colony develops unexplained technology problems. It crashes on a new world, leaving the few surviving humans without much in the way of supplies or prospects - until they meet the natives.

I must say I have my doubts about the natives. In true 50s B movie style, these are giant intelligent molluscs. Sort of air breathing cuttlefish which have developed into a bronze age culture. It's sort of clever - and at times they are truly alien - especially the colour mood indicators and gender divisions - but mostly they are unfortunately unbelievable and all too human.

For example they have a vocal language - and both sides can learn each others in a matter of weeks. I suspect Eric has never tried to learn even a related language, let alone a truly alien one. Having had the characters learn the other's language one is then subject to the continual insertion of un-translated words - a source of constant irritation to the reader, especially the names. If this is too remind us we are dealing with aliens it fails, and remains purely a source of annoyance. The other great failing are several instances of characters soliloquising to themselves about the problems they are in - rather than getting on and solving them.

However there are also many good points. The writing is emotive, and captures the passions and feeling of the characters you care about - the children don't have much development, but the surviving adults and our aliens of interest are all explored in detail. There is also a lot of commentary on historical trends, and the societal consequences of such decisions. I don't always agree with the notions Flint presents, but the points he makes certainly deserve consideration.

For a debut free novel its well worth the few hours it takes to read, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else Eric has managed to produce.
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A nice variant of the 'humans trapped on an alien planet' genre.

Sample Chapters: http://webscriptions.net/10.1125/Baen/067187800X/067187800X.htm