Review: The Rim Rebels
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 29, 2012
The basic underlying premise is that a scientist is able to predict the fall of the Empire, and using this knowledge, a group of people set about not only preparing for the fall, but to also hasten that fall.If you've read Asimov's Foundation, it may sound kind of familiar. But the similarities are superficial. Asimov has two foundations: one well-known foundation to save mankind's knowledge, and one secretly and gently moving humankind towards a specific goal. In this book, the goals are not quite so secret in their attempts to overthrow the Empire, but what's needed is solid evidence of sedition, and that's where the heroes of this story come into play.Much of this novel is political intrigue, as agents from both sides of the game attempt to manipulate the main character, an ordinary space trader. The characters are fairly stereotypical, you will like or hate them almost from the outset, but that doesn't really deter from the story, which was rather engaging.The editing could use an aggressive round. Many of the editing errors are typically punctuation or capitalization errors. They're not disruptive enough to jar me out of the story, but I think the most amusing was "reinforcentimeterents".The author has another book,The Privateer, which seems to be set in the same universe, only that book appears to occur after the Fall. I'm simply speculating here, but the similarities are interesting enough to note. I always like to read world-building books, even if the books are not directly related, but simply sharing the same history.