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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9781416555414
ISBN number: 1416555412
Label: Baen
Manufacturer: Baen
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 1248
Printing Date: April 29, 2008
Publishing house: Baen
Sale Popularity Level: 29146
Studio: Baen
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Product Description:
The Union of Arcana has expanded through the portals linking parallel universes for over a century and a half. In that time, its soldiers and sorcerers have laid claim to one uninhabited planet after another—all of them Earth, and in the process, the Union has become the most powerful, most wealthy civilization in all of human history. But all of that is about to come to a screeching halt, for the Union’s scouts have just discovered a new portal, and on its far side lies a shattering revelation. Arcana is not alone, after all. There is another human society, Sharona, which has also been exploring the Multiverse, and the very first contact between them did not go well. Arcana is horrified by the alien weapons of its sudden opponents, weapons its sorcerers cannot explain or duplicate. Weapons based upon something called . . . science. But Sharona is equally horrified by Arcana’s “magical” weapons. Neither side expected the confrontation. Both sides think the other fired first, and no one on either side understands the “technology” of the other. But as the initial disastrous contact snowballs into all-out warfare, both sides can agree on one thing. The portal which brought them together is Hell’s Gate itself!
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Rated by buyers 
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After 600 pages I've decided to put this book down, which is surprising for me considering its a David Weber. The book has all the essential characters, villians, heros, techonology, magic but missing an editor.
There are chapters of explanations of characters families, where they lived what lived with them, how they lived which just plain bogged things down.
The characters re-actions to events or situations just didnt seem plausible. One of the main characters , Jasak's interactions with the 'enemy'(Shaylar and Jathmar) appeared more like a girl scout view rather than a career military man. He felt infinite empathy and sadness for his prisoners, who he didnt know anything about.
Also the use of adjectives got a little rattling, characters regulary felt 'fury' white-lipped fury, raging fury and simmering fury where a few of the terms liberally used, which irrated me for some reason.
If you like David Weber I wouldnt pick up this book.
Which is a pity, because the fundamental story is good although more into the fantasy genre, and the characters, plots and twists could definately work. Sadly this tome is verbose and bloated. The reader is forced to wade through pages of diatribe to get to the rare worthwhile bits
Rated by buyers 
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This is the very first in the "Multiverse" series by Dave Weber and Linda Evans, and is followed by the excellent "Hell's Gate." It tells the story of contact and increasingly of conflict between two civilisations, both spanning multiple universes.
Judging by the other reviews a lot of people apparently hated this: I rather liked it. Perhaps the problem is that it takes a long time to get going. Dave Weber and Linda Evans use a lot of pages to explain, very first the setup of a highly complex set of universes, and second, how two universe-spanning civilisations, each of which comprises a majority of reasonably decent but fallible human beings, both come to believe that the other has attacked them.
I found this story set-up interesting, others may not. However, without wanting to give too much away, if you are looking for the kind of action in many of David Weber's other novels, this series looks likely to deliver it big time in subsequent volumes, and "Hell's Gate" explains how that happens.
To summarise the "Multiverse" opening position: between one and two centuries before the events of these novels, portals start to open between different versions of the planet earth - apparently between parallel timelines. Most of the different universes which are connected by these portals are not inhabited by intelligent life, but two have human civilisations. Both start to explore the new worlds to which their homeworlds are suddenly connected, and then each expands into these new worlds, experiencing over a century of peaceful colonisation and growth.
There is an explanation given for the fact that for over a century neither civilisation finds other humans. It is suggested that different timelines are splitting off from one another like lines radiating outward from a central point in all directions, and similar timelines tend not to collide because they are heading in the same direction: hence when timelines do intersect they tend to be very different, e.g. so different that humans never evolved.
But eventually these two civilisations do meet. On a world new to both of them, a lone scout from a military survey party of the "Union of Arcana" encounters a single member of an armed civilian survey party from the civilisation which began on the world called Sharona. Nobody, including the reader, would ever know for certain who shot first, because one was killed and the other mortally wounded. At very first each side believes it has been attacked.
Both civilisations now spread over hundreds of worlds, and their cultures have more in common than either realises, but their technology is utterly different. Sharona's is broadly similar to our science, and their engineering and construction abilities are in most respects about where our Earth was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including railways, machine guns and heavy artillery. They don't have radio but do not need it because their scientists have discovered how to train people to use certain psionic talents such as telepathy.
Arcana, by contrast, has very little of what we would call engineering - the most advanced weapon they have which does not use psi-abilities/magic is the crossbow - but they have formidable weapons of a completely different type. Firstly they have trained creatures from their world, such as flying, fire-breathing dragons, which are just legends in ours: and their magical/psionic talents, while operating on different principles, are far more powerful than those of the Sharonians, and include the ability to store energy and information in crystals so as to be able to use them like a handgun or a laptop computer.
So when these two completely distinct civilisations think that they have been attacked, each is able to inflict surprise after surprise on the other.
Will the decent people who are a majority of both sides be able to negotiate a peace? Of are they doomed to a universe-spanning war?
Before I read these books I thought they might be just another rehash of John Barnes' "Timeline wars" stories of the battles against the Closers (e.g. Patton's Spaceship etc). Having now read the very first two "Multiverse" books I think that does Weber and Evans an injustice. If you do like Barnes' "Timeline wars" books there is an excellent chance that you will like this series but it's not just a rehash of the same idea, there are a lot of very original aspects to the clash of civilisations in these books.
However, if you are the sort of reader who insists on lots of action - for example, if you loved most of Weber's Honorverse books but hated "War of Honor" or if you liked most of Harry Turtledove's "Worldwar" books but hated the "Second Contact" and "Homeward Bound" successors - then you may like the successor books but not "Hell's Gate."
Personally I greatly enjoyed both "Hell's Gate" and "Hell Hath No Fury." ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
This book is 1200 pages and would have greatly benefitted by being shortened to 300 pages or so. That would at least have created something resempling a pace. As it is, it crawls along, one irrelevant detail after another. To add insult to injury, it is not even SF. It is fantasy, with one side in the conflict using magic, and the other having telepaths and ''technology'' on the level where a revolver is considerd high-tech. I have to admit that I did not make it past page 250 before I threw it into the trash. Maybe it gets better after that, but I very much doubt it.
Rated by buyers -
I read, or rather flipped through, this turgid novel in paperback where it clocks in at 1236 pages, including a 27 page glossary. Although this book has excellent action sequences these are separated by page after page after page of meandering prose that gives the term 'expository writing' a bad name. Clearly, the publishing house editors have lost control of the authors here. You can get through this book and have a petty good grasp of the situation by skimming along and actually reading about one page in three. I think about 20 percent of the text could have been eliminated if they had just included a few maps. At the very least would if have killed them to include maps of the Sharonan and Arcanan home 'Earth' equivalents? Fortunately, the book doesn't cost more than a normal paperback.
It's a shame because the characterization is pretty good and the plotting has some interesting twists and turns. But the good parts are oases in a desert of gobbledygook. Despite this, I bought the second book - the very first ends in a cliffhanger and I'm a sucker for cliffhangers.
Rated by buyers 
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Found most of the book incredibly boring. Lacked a good editor. By the end I was hoping for a nuclear winter to put everyone out of their misery.
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