Review: That awful little secret
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 11, 2013
I have an awful secret, a secret shame that I'm almost too embarrassed to admit. I really, really like this book and yes Oh God! I'll buy the next one. But the shame. The secret shame of liking it.Let me explain.The back-story is cool - way cool! Earth has been destroyed in parallel dimensions hundreds of thousands of times. Time and again it's been defeated, by aliens, destroyed by asteroids, has nuked itself, bio weaponed itself to death etc etc. You name it, Earth has died that way at either its own hands or aliens.And best of all, our heroes in the TSN have scoured these countless dimensions for each universes's technologies, have mastered them all and will now make them available in our universe so we don't got the way every other Earth has!Now that is one cool premise for a series and more battles to fight and challenges to overcome than almost any series I can think of. Space Opera at its best!That's the back story and in TSN: The Best Laid Plans we pick up where TSN Epiphany left off. In Epiphany we discovered - by mistake almost which I thought was kind of cool - that Earth has already been invaded by one of these countless threats. The new TSN hasn't even introduced itself to Earth's population properly only to discover that it might already be too late to save it. So far so good! And the alien menace itself? Very capable, very alien and very hard to stop. In fact possibly impossible to ever eradicate completely. Once again very cool, very excellent Space Opera.So why am I ashamed to admit I like the series? What's so wrong with TSN: The Best Laid Plans that I feel that admitting I do enjoy it is like admitting some kind of odd perversion?Well ya see, on any world where Islam has every developed mankind has exterminated itself. It's a natural outgrowth of what Islam is ya see? And only the old US is what freedom is really about ya see? And people from Iceland? Well they all obey orders because they're all brainwashed Europeans ya see? Could it be that Icelandic people are actually well informed, educated, cooperative and simply know each other well due to the size of the country? No, its `because they aren't American that they never rebel ya see. And English folks? Was a great country but now? Creeping socialist medicine ya see! Ruined it! No good old US - you get no health care because you chose to get sick - in the UK. Don dang it! Just socialist medicine for all even for those who went and got cancer on purpose!And yes, The Best Laid Plans does cover and discuss American exceptionalisim as well. Of course it does? It wouldn't be a real book if it didn'tEh gods! The sheer uninformed nature of it all. The right-wing hokum bollix - no one chooses to get sick! Get over it!Yet for all its blathering ignorance of the non-Us world, I really like the plot, the aliens and the characters. Its like simple, nice Billy - who only ever went to propaganda school -wrote a really cool book on aliens. The ideas are there, the characters are there. Its real honest, well plotted space opera.But puhlleeeeese author. Take your foot our of your mouth when you talk about other countries. No, people from Iceland do not just follow orders due to Euro brainwashing. Yes people from Australia are nice, but no, none of them secretly want to be Americans and neither do the Canadians. No Amerians are not the most empathic people in the wold - all people are empathic, probably becuase they're all human just like us. So keep writing - I love your plot. But spend the $$ I'm going to spend on the series - because yes I will recommend this book to folks - on a passport, some air tickets and some time off in other parts of the world.And sorry, while most Indonesians might be Moslems, they are in fact as friendly and broad minded a group as you are likely to find anywhere in the world... like say in a Baptist, mid-west red state. Umm, Ok, maybe more than that...And no, guns don't solve everything, and yes while people do kill people its actually guns that make it easier to do so - that's why armies are equipped with them and not mangoes.Yes indeed, another very, very special book in oh so many ways! But god! I so enjoyed it. The shame! The shame!