Review: Great Story Poor Social Science
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 22, 2014
This is another example, one I've seen a lot, of great story premise hampered by poorly fleshed out background and imperfect world building.Pros:Great Story premise- Large galactic empires, older and more technologically advanced than us but not so much that their science is overwhelming to seem magical, come to earth and savagely bring humanity into the reality of the Galaxy at large.Solid Character development- I liked the main characters and felt they grew through the story, their dialogue, both external and internal, were appropriate and well done. Also the introduction of an allied alien race, with their own agenda, was both interesting and added to the story arch.Tech was fun and appropriate- The tech involved was easy to understand, not bogged down by overwhelming "tech talk," and made sense for the most part in relation to current understanding of physics.Limited grammar and spelling errors- For an indie it was well done, some minor instances of inconsistencies but overall solid. An example would be when Army Rangers were on guard duty and the OIC (Officer in Charge) would order his "marines," you just said they were Rangers, on some sort of duty.Cons:Poor world building- As pointed out by another reviewer, the U.S. seems to control everything in space. Do you mean to tell me that the other world powers have almost no presence in orbit or space? Why is it that only the U.S. has it's soldiers abducted? Wouldn't it be easier to land in China and abduct a quick million or so of their soldiers? What is going on in the rest of the world, did they not have any leadership or infrastructure left, was it only the U.S. that survived, could they not have contributed anything of military or scientific value? It would be as if there was a global issue but the focus was brought down to the issues occurring in a small town somewhere in America, this works great in a zombie novel but fails when you attempt to expand the premise to a galaxy wide stage.Military Tropes- Usually in this type of story one branch or the other gets to be the torch bearer, sometimes it's the army, others it's Special Forces units of some type, and others it's the Navy or Air Force, this time the Marines get the baton as the ass kicker, name takers. The Marines get the bad-ass battle suits and light sabers, and due to their intense training I guess, immediately learn to use the new tech and begin to devastate everything in their path. Never mind the fact that women aren't allowed to serve as combat troops in the marines, something that must have changed before the time period of the story, am I really supposed to believe that half the officer and NCO corps are female?Overall a good story burdened with too many questions. For the price I would recommend and would support the continuation of the story line, I would just hope the author expands the world building aspect of the book.