Review: Alarm of War
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 23, 2012
The story starts off with rapid point of view shifts between various major characters. While it does serve the purpose of laying out the basic conflict, I find such methods wearying, as this tends to introduce a large number of players in short bursts, which can make tracking difficult. Over time, these point of views tend to converge as the conflict is fully developed, and the POV shifts are not as disruptive.The story progresses from political intrigue to military action, and the action, once it cranks up, generally keeps a high pace. Lots of tactical scenes with a fine attention to details gives you a good sense of sympathy with the characters. The character development is not exactly smooth, as many of the characters go from "raw recruits" to highly refined, and highly trusted military figures in a pretty short time. You'll need a deep suspension of belief following the primary character's actions.Editing could use a final aggressive round. Missing or extraneous quotation marks, missed or incorrect words, and some physical formatting errors are the primary, and quite often these are most prolific errors in self-published works. There is at least one point of continuity loss (whisker vs. needle laser). The "tried and true" device of "mutiny" is a bit played out in the space opera genre, so hopefully the author will develop alternate methods of achieving the goals.These points aside, I did enjoy the story and would look forward to more in this series.