Review: This Is War
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 01 15, 2012
Demons of the Void, a story of Earth vs. nasty extraterrestrials conflict, began as a slow read, on and off over a couple of weeks for the first third of the book. Then, the story became more interesting and I completed  the remaining two thirds over the next 24 hours.Evidently the first of what the author hopes to be a long, long series of books chronicling the interaction between tiny and underdeveloped 'Earth' and a vastly more advanced and not exactly friendly interstellar empire, Demons of the Void sets the stage for more adventures to come. It establishes the motive for conflict: the Toralii destroy 3 large cities justifying their unfriendly gesture by our developing certain technologies on which they want to keep an exclusive monopoly. We are introduced to those who are likely to be the heroes throughout the series: pretty but tough as nails commander Melissa Liao of the Chinese Liberation army, man of the world captain Gregoire of EU's Belgium, brilliant scientist, nerdy and anti-authoritarian Dr. Summer Rowe, Saara, the captured friendly alien. And, of course, the conflict is set in motion by 'us' deciding to fight back rather than capitulate and taking the fight to the aggressor. By book's end the stage is set for more old fashion, big scale interstellar war, divide and conquer diplomacy, space adventure, gee-whiz new tech and hurried romance.Of course, discussing the plot in any great detail is tabu but there's not a lot to discuss anyway. A good portion of the narration is fast-action, big time space shootouts involving huge spaceships that, somehow, we could easily build and equip in... 2029? There is also the more or less romantic entanglement between two of the principals and the author's subtle or not so subtle references to today's realities. It's a good package overall for anyone into 'classic sci-fi, action packed, extremely kinetic, big time space battles. In other words, don't expect TOO much when it comes to character development and multi-threaded plots but do expect to find yourself wondering what's going to happen next once you reach the end of the book IF you fall inside the targeted audience.I am not going to hyper-analyze this so, as a brief evaluation I would say that, for an action sci-fi book, the story line would be okay if it all started maybe 100-200 years in the future not 17 years from now. The science is... so-so but, hey, can't have good action sci-fi unless there's some seemingly impossible tech thrown in. Characters appear cartoonish in the beginning but they do get fleshed out a little by the time the reading is over.Amazon's 3 stars mean "It's okay" and Demons of the Void is without a doubt a good 'first book'. Amazon's 4 stars mean "I like it" which I'm not so sure at this time. I almost like it and I can see how the series could find its readership but I am not a 'series' reader. Compensating for my 'anti series' bias, I will translate my "almost liked it" into a 4 star rating.