Review: Simply horrible, and in so many ways.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 01 8, 2014
I'll preface this review by saying I've read Saxon Andrew before...the Lens of Time series wasn't a bad bit of escapism for what it was. So, in this book I expected there to be no characters, but caricatures. I knew the romantic subplots would be sophomoric and puerile. I also expected the main plot to be handled with the subtly and nuance of repeated hits to the groin with a ball bat. And I was right.What I didn't expect was the lazy, sloppy, error riddled, quasi-political rant that was Jesse's Starship.It wouldn't be fair to simply call this "left-wing propaganda," though I can see where that comes from. I actually can't tell the author's personal politics from reading the story other than to say his simplistic, black-and-white stories tend to leave no area for interpretation. On one hand you have the call for personal disarmament, yet on the other the advocacy of an Orwellian society in which the "Hunters" get to impose summary death sentences on those who aren't "peaceful." Let that little bit of irony sink in... Even if Saxon was using this book as a vehicle to promote political views I disagree with I would still happily read it (if it was a good story, and this one had real potential), but I'm not sure that was his goal or if he was even aware of it. There were too many contradictory principles for me to think this was his intent. Or, more to the point, I don't think he's a good enough writer to even attempt it. His books tend to have that training-wheels-just-taken-off feel in that it's a struggle just to muddle along. I will say this; being condescended to by a book that is so poorly written was more than a little insulting.The big part that bothered me, from a technical aspect, is that if you're going to write about the military, LEARN about the military. First off... they're Navy SEALs, not Seals (It's an acronym, Saxon. They're not sea mammals.) The Navy doesn't have "Sargents". In fact, NOBODY has "Sargents". They're sergeants, and only the Army, Air Force, and Marines have them. The lack of knowledge about almost every aspect of the military (that is available on Wikipedia and a dozen other sources for free) makes this book almost impossible to enjoy. It's just like another "military" sci-fi book I suffered through recently... if you're too lazy to do even a modicum of research, why make it the centerpiece of your story?So why 1 star? Even though I'm still not sure Saxon was grandstanding about the second amendment or a right/left paradigm, I did get that he has a genuine contempt for the U.S. military, which was juxtaposed with a breathtaking ignorance of the very people and institutions he so freely disparaged throughout the entire book. The combination of that made the book entirely unpalatable and more or less guaranteed Saxon will never get another dime out of me.