RCN Series

The RCN Series (also known as the Lt. Leary series) is a sequence of stand-alone science fiction novels by David Drake. They center around Daniel Leary, an officer in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy (RCN), and Adele Mundy, a librarian and spy. Drake has described it as "an SF version of the Aubrey/Maturin series" by Patrick O'Brian. In contrast to the hardcore military science fiction bent of Drake's Hammer's Slammers series, these novels are more character driven and feature political intrigue as well as battles.

The plots of the novels are based on historical incidents, often from Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome. The prologue of each book includes details of its historical basis.

After discovering the Aubrey/Maturin novels, Drake gave some thought to space opera with two equal but very different characters as protagonists. When David Weber asked Drake for a novella to appear in the first Honorverse anthology, More Than Honor, Drake wrote a story named "A Grand Tour" about a young nobleman and his older, female tutor. Drake, Baen and Weber all liked the story, but Drake, feeling the concept needed a full-length novel to work properly, wrote With the Lightnings which uses different characters in a similar pairing.

The RCN Series focuses on the intertwined lives of two primary characters. Daniel Leary is a Lieutenant (promoted to Captain in the later novels) in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy, a brilliant strategist, charismatic leader, charmer of women, and also the estranged son of Speaker Corder Leary, a feared, revered and respected member of the planet of Cinnabar's government. Adele Mundy is a librarian with a deep-rooted passion for information and knowledge, which has fueled her unparalleled talents in the areas of information retrieval by any means necessary, including systems infiltration and circumventing information security. Raised in the Cinnabaran aristocracy, Adele also is an expert pistol shot, a skill useful for surviving and avoiding aristocratic duels.

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