Review: Good, but it could be great, if only . . .
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 10, 2013
I’ve been a science fiction fan since reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter series way back in the dark ages of the 1950s. I particularly like the swashbuckling space epics with the good guys battling evil a la Han Solo from the bridge of his Millennium Falcon. So, I approached Steven Atwood’s Amari with some pretty high expectations.Amari is the story of space pirate Amari Prokop, who does battle against the International Security Space Force (ISSF), the dreaded secret police of the UN. With her crew of pirates, including her XO, Borris, with whom she has a somewhat strange relationship, Amari dashes off to dispense justice and get some payback for past ISSF misdeeds when she is tasked with snatching a prisoner from an ISSF prisoner transport vessel.This is a competently written story – albeit with a few grammatical glitches that threw me a bit off stride, but not irrevocably so, and one or two minor internal inconsistencies – but, despite the potential, it doesn’t quite rise to the level I believe Atwood is capable of.  Dialogue and descriptions are at time a bit wordy and cliché. That said, Amari is still a fun story to read  I can see the four-star potential in Atwood’s writing, but alas, I can only give him three stars this time.