Review: Sci-Fi Action at its Finest!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 10, 2012
John Bowers' "A Vow to Sophia" is an exciting, entralling science fiction story that will have readers entranced until the very end and leave them wanting more.The story (of course) is set in the distant future where Earth is renamed "Terra" and several planets and moons have been colonized by the Federation. War erupts when Planet Sirius starts invading and conquering worlds like space Nazis, hitting suddenly and hitting hard with each attack. Swept in the chaos are our star characters.Johnny Lincoln is a test pilot who fends off a Sirian attack the day they first attack Terra who suddenly becomes a hero and wants to do his part to defend the planet. Onja Kvoorik is an escapee from  Vega III, a planet long conquered by the Sirians where women are enslaved and abused, who vowed to Vega's goddess to rescue her family and kill as many Sirians as possible in the process. The two struggle to overcome many obstacles to play the roles they want in the war in parallel storylines until they team up to become a nigh-unstoppable force.The story's greatest strength is its characters. Johnny and Onja are fascinating characters with a lot of depth, complexity and flaws. Even with their bad moments, they're still likable and you feel for them. They're fully realized characters one doesn't come across too often these days. The rest of the cast is pretty interesting too. Even characters who are real jerks most of the time are given some extra depth at some point. A prime example is Corporal Tkach, the "sadistic drill instructor" mentioned in the description. Most of the time he's a despicable a-hole you keep wanting something bad to happen to. Then there's a scene where he and Onja have a moment and we see there's a method to his madness. He still ends up being a total dick, but it's nice Bowers made time to humanize him. Almost every character, no matter how small their role, is given spot on characterization that helps us quickly learn about and like them.It also doesn't pull any punches. The Fighter Queen Saga does for science-fiction what "Game of Thrones" does for fantasy, keeping things grounded with more violence, swearing and sex than some people will be used to. There's a LOT of swearing, probably more than any other sci-fi book. People die suddenly and quickly. And there's a lot of sexual content, both consentual and rape, though it's never too explicit. If it were a movie it would have be rated R (like the books themselves) or it would have to be a TV show/Mini-series on HBO, Showtime or even FX or TNT. And I mean that in the way possible!This is one the best science fiction ebooks around, and I imagine the rest of the series is really good too. I think I'll have to try another sometime...