David Weber is a proponent of nuclear power, finds the political power enjoyed by Iran ludicrous, loves British military history, his steak done rare, and thinks our planet should have a central, unified government. Humans are awesome. The Second Amendment should be sacrosanct (‘cause what if aliens invade? We’ll all need guns!). And, oh yeah: America kicks ass.

These are the messages I received in a reading of his latest novel, Out of the Dark.

Also, there are vampires.

For the first ten chapters or so, I just was not sure what to make of this book. Of course, it’s David Weber, and he (like sex, pizza, and movies starring Bradley Cooper) can never be all bad. And yet I spent at least the first hour of reading this book with a furrowed brow, mentally exclaiming: "What the fuck?"

But from there, I started to really enjoy myself. A lot. Because I think I finally figured out what was happening here. This wasn’t a serious effort, this wasn’t the kind of proper science fiction that Weber usually offers up to a grateful populace. This was a joke. A cunning self-parody! There could be no other explanation -- it was all just so completely Fucked. Up.

Seriously, Out of the Dark reads like Weber channeling his inner-Supernatural, his inner-Douglas Coupland, his inner-Joaquin Phoenix, breaking the fourth wall and poking fun and totally messing with us, giving us a bizarre blend of standard tropes like Alien Invasion, Mirror to Society, Political Diatribe and Humans Rule -- with, y'know, vampires.

What a prankster!

He even has two major characters in here -- the Dvoraks, husband and wife -- named Dave and Sharon… and Dave Weber’s wife’s name is Sharon! The Dvoraks have three children, named Morgana, Maighread and Malachai (the Webers’ own three are Morgan, Megan and Michael); they have dogs named Nimue and Merlin (names of a dual character in Weber’s best-selling Safehold series); and Dave reads the book David and the Phoenix to his kids -- which Honor Harrington likewise reads to hers’!

Hilarious.

I will also say it took me some time to get used to a David Weber so very at home with current pop culture -- this story is set in the near future instead of, for example, Honor’s far-flung one, where allusions to existing Earth personalities tend to be Civil War Generals and Clausewitz -- which made Lady Gaga (who will apparently still be gracing us with her musical stylings a decade or so from now) come as something of a shock. Once I’d embraced it, however, I began to find all the 21st Century stuff very amusing -- especially this one reference to Stargate SG-1 that had me laughing out very (and embarrassingly) loud on a crowded subway.

So, yep, self-parody. A kind of intentionally overblown, overloaded and insane Mary Sue -- or in this case, Gary Stu -- alien invasion adventure. As batshit crazy as this book is, that’s what I’m going with.

And taken in that light, Out of the Dark is a brilliantly-executed laugh riot.

To our plot. A ship representing the galactic governing body known as the Hegemony arrives in orbit around this island Earth -- or KU-197-20, as we’ve been designated -- and its crew watches in horrified fascination as Henry V of England’s army goes up against the French at the Battle of Agincourt (1415). Herbivorous and smugly pacifist, the Barthoni -- one of the Hegemony’s many signatory races -- are beside themselves at the sight of such reckless bloodshed. They speak of their distaste for humanity’s omnivorous ways (hey, I’m vegetarian; you like me, right?) and also make significant mention of a repugnantly carnivorous Hegemony race known as the Shongairi.

Oh, we’ll be seeing them again.

And indeed we do. Cut to early 21st Century -- next Sunday, A.D., as MST3K might have it -- and the Vogons… sorry, Shongairi… arrive in orbit to enslave us all. Despite our technology having advanced way more than it apparently should have in the 600 years since the Hegemony last came our way -- ‘cause, remember, humans are awesome -- they attack! Then come several hundred pages of various people from various militaries staging guerilla warfare against “the Puppies” (the Shongairi look like dogs, you see) while they bomb the hell out of us, eat us, and struggle to understand our motivations and psychology. (This, despite having had ample access to reality television broadcasts and, no doubt, Jerry Springer reruns.)

As usual in the Weber oeuvre, the carnage is absolute, people we like die, and we get a lot of details of things we could perhaps carry on without. In particular, my knowledge of the interleaving state highways of the American Eastern Seaboard is now greatly broadened; if every map of the area in existence were to be destroyed, we could navigate around the Carolinas just by using the directions in this book. There’s also a lot of pointed and topical political commentary and comparative religious ideology in here, all of which feels very manifesto-ish, like this stuff has been bugging Weber for a very long time and he just needed a pulpit from which to preach it.

The writing is excellent, of course, as you’d expect: verbose, mellifluous and exacting, with the occasional flash of Weberian genius (“He woke slowly, floating up from the depths like someone else’s ghost…” -- gorgeous). However, this is the first time I have ever noticed a particular verbal -- or, I guess, written -- tic in Weber’s prose, and once I’d noticed it, it was impossible not to do so. The culprit: “for that matter.” The phrase occurs at least 60 times in this book; at one point, it was employed four times in the same monologue (which is how I first noticed it). Also recurring ad infinitum: “on the other hand”. Pretty much the only way any of the characters in here who employ this, either human or alien,  would have had enough “other hands” was if their ancestors had been octopuses.

But, anyway.

In the end, and almost despite myself, I really had fun with this book, as long as I didn’t take it seriously AT ALL. As long as I looked at it as a pastiche, a kind of mammoth mash-up even, then I enjoyed it. A lot. I mean, it’s David Weber meets Henry V meets Independence Day meets Earth Girls Are Easy meets Mars Attacks! meets Jericho meets War of the Worlds meets Tomorrow, When the War Began meets Battlefield Earth meets -- holy shit! -- Dracula.

I’m telling you: Fucked. Up.

  -- Rachel Hyland