Review: A Fun ride
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 8, 2014
The Terran Gambit is the first entry into Enti Webb's The Pax Humana cycle. It's wasn't that surprising, at least to me, that The Terran Gambit is about the end of the Pax Humana. Global, or galactic, peace is hard to make interesting. Humans have spread far beyond Earth, and have created a vast state, called The Corsican Empire, which is styled upon the Roman Empire. At the edges of the Empire there are small pirate groups or unaligned planets, but the vast majority of the empire lives without war, leaving humanity in a state of peace, or a Pax Humana.The book opens with the citizens of the Earth rebelling, though their reasons for revolt are not clear. This lack of real motivation was a problem for me throughout the book. There are some passages where it's mentioned that the bureaucracy is overwhelming, and basic support services are hard to come by, but nothing that convinced me that rebellion was necessary. This rebellion is quickly crushed, though one Resistance battleship escapes. At this point the story jumps forwards three years, after the resistance has been crushed and reintegrated with the rest of the empire.Here we join our heroes, three hotshots who distinguished themselves while fighting for the resistance and one latecomer, as they report to a newly forming fleet. This fleet features the newest, biggest, and baddest ships the Empire has to offer, and the majority of the crew is former Resistance members. Obviously we all see where this is going. In between the action Webb uses his heroes to showcase a bit of what’s going on down on Earth that compels everyone to rebel. As I mentioned before, he didn’t sell me on it. Hopefully in future editions he delves more into the Resistance’s background.Along the way we meet the enemy, an Empire Admiral by the name of Trajan. It’s quite clear that he’s modeled off of Imperial Grand Admiral Thrawn from The Thrawn Trilogy. Instead of art Trajan analyzes people using their taste in music, and despite lacking the red alien eyes has his face disfigured from a lost eye. Now, before anyone starts making assumptions, I’m not saying this is a bad thing. Thrawn is one of my favorite villains, and it’s nice to see another take on his character. So far Trajan hasn’t been developed much, but I get the sense that Webb is setting him up for some big events in future installments.Overall I thoroughly enjoyed The Terran Gambit. The action was tight, and the combat exciting. One thing that did strike me as an issue was some of the descriptions of women, I personally think that the phrase “tight little ass” should only be uttered by a character, not used as a descriptive phrase. Still, the story grabbed my attention, and the characters were likeable. I’ll be reading the sequel (supposed to come out this month - May 2014) as soon as I can.Per G Jonsson on PG’s Ramblings liked the book, and had a few interesting comments. One that struck me was that he found some of the action to be unrealistic. I have to agree, but I will give The Terran Gambit the benefit of the doubt; I put it in the category of sci-fi totally opposite of “hard sci-fi,” whatever that may be. It never tries to be hard, and so shouldn’t, in my opinion, be held to that standard. Another comment he made was that the book mostly is setting up the later series. This I wholeheartedly agree with, but again, don’t hold it against the book. We’ve all got to start somewhere. I think we have to see how the sequels are handled to determine if this was the right move or not.