Info dumps

I'm plowing through David Weber's Shadow of Saganami.

Yes, I know it's been on the tbr list for a while, but if you've ever read any of Mr Weber's recent books in the Honor Harrington universe, you'll know he spends a lot of time writing about the political stuff as much as the action; and those books are big.

The Shadow of Saganami is nine-hundred plus pages, and while that doesn't faze me, I approached it with trepidation because of the 'info dumps'.

As writers, we know that is a no-no and to avoid it as much as possible because it pulls the reader from the story. Not so Mr Weber. He has his info dumps written in the form of conversations. One character explaining to another about the geo-political landscape of the Talbott Cluster, for example, took pages.

It's daunting and requires concentration and, sadly, reminds me too much of Tom Clancy. I recall one Clancy book I read went into the minutia of how a nuclear device works. It went on and on and on, so much so that I skipped a page and continued reading, not realising that at the very end of that info dump, was the reason the bomb didn't go off. I got really confused.

To me, that is a fault that lies with the author, not the reader. You cannot bore your readers stupid and expect them to continue to read your work.

David Weber is different. I love his work and the info dumps are well written and intelligent, though like I said, you have to concentrate. You could skip parts of them and still know what's going on; and that's what is important.

Personally, I try to avoid mass info dumps, but I have nowhere near the skill or the readership of Mr Weber (I can dream, though; you gotta have a dream). Instead, I break up the information into bite sized pieces so the reader absorbs the information virtually without knowing - at least, I hope that's the way it works - using... conversations. I think it's the best way to communicate information to the reader without the long and tedious process of 'explaining'.

I suspect that with Mr Weber, it's simply a case of his universe being extremely large. This is the first book in which I've noticed repeat first or surnames - he's got to have a database of thousands of names, and I don't blame him for re-using names - it would be ludicrous for him not to.

I'm near the end of the book and so far, it lives up to my expectations; all I have to do now, is wait for At All Costs to come out in paperback - and the waiting is killing me!