Review: Ending "twist" contradicts everything that came before
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 02 18, 2014
The concept is excellent. I could certainly imagine this kind of work going on in the future (if it hasn't been attempted already).Unfortunately, the book suffers from a few flaws that I cannot forgive.To illustrate one, it has an entire race of geniuses (the Qufmen) but utterly fails to ever put that genius on display. In the expository scenes, the alpha Qufman never impresses with his insights or intelligence; his audience respects and fears him because of his physical strength and short fuse. At no point do we get a scene where he lays out his plan for all of us to marvel at his genius. Lastly, even the lower ranked Qufmen are supposed to be geniuses but in the battle scenes we don't see them do anything clever or extraordinary that the "dumb" human grunts aren't already doing. Fail.Then *spoilers*....At the end of the book, we meet the high council that runs the planet earth. During this scene we discover that the alpha Qufman runs the council and has been running it for at least as long as it took to get the protagonist into the Service. Perhaps this was supposed to illustrate the Qufman's genius and long-term planning, but the timing of it doesn't add up in the book. The Qufman is the enemy for a good chunk of it but then we discover he's been running this council all along? Fail.The author needed more beta-readers. The plot has huge holes. Ultimately, it robbed me of any enjoyment. I don't recommend this book but I will take a look at any follow-up efforts from the same author.