Review: Doesn't Quite Make It
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 24, 2014
Right up front, I got it for free, so no complaints there. For free it wasn't bad, and if I was in Junior High it wouldn't be bad, but ...The mechanical construction and editing are decent, but the story itself is nothing new or unusual and it never really caught fire or grabbed my interest.  The narrative is all tell  and no show, and the dialog - particularly the 'manly banter' - is forced, contrived, and awkward.The characters are all flat and cartoony and stereotypical - 'the honorable former SF operator', 'the grizzled old war horse', 'the plucky young girl', 'the reprehensible drug lord', 'the spoiled, entitled, rich-bitch daughter', et al.The author tries to be too descriptive; where he doesn't use stock phrases and clichés he makes excessive use of the thesaurus - yes, technically a drug lord's gang of henchmen are 'miscreants', but that makes them sound more like a group of naughty schoolboys rather than the hardened criminals  they're supposed to be.The military and guns'n'ammo stuff are superficially correct, but the author does still make some egregious errors - the 'grizzled old Master Chief Petty Officer retired navy SeAL' would never have been a 'young sergeant' during the Vietnam war.There's more, but you get the idea.Individually, none of these objections are show-stoppers, but collectively they make for a lukewarm experience at best - it's not horribly bad, but it does have significant plot and stylistic issues.  I'd strongly recommend the free sample first and see what you think.