Review: Promising start for a young newbie SF author
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 24, 2014
I picked up LACUNA because it (a) sounded interesting and (b) was free.  I often troll inexpensive Kindle only releases in addition to full priced novels by "established" authors.  "Sometimes the magic works, sometimes it doesn't", said Grandfather to Dustin Hoffman in LITTLE BIG MAN.David Adams has managed a solid debut in authoring a good old-fashioned space opera with hints of hard SF (think: a a very young Heinlein with limited military experience) that brings us back the to the heyday of SF in the 1950s.  It is mid 21st century and America has fallen into economic chaos and lost her position as THE world power. The Chinese, Australians and others have ascended and mankind has just tested the first true warp drive.  There is an immediate and comprehensive response from unknown aliens, the Toralii, that destroys Beijing, Tehran and Sydney, with the warning, "Never attempt this technology again."  The Toralii are technologically more advanced than we are, but only by a little (or so it seems).The world responds by banding together and creating 3 great "Pillars"  of humanity, large warships that have the best and the brightest on them. We follow the Beijing, captained by Commander Liao of the People's Republic of China, through its shakedown cruise to a final battle to the death with a Toralii warship.  There are aliens (large felines) and alien tech and battle strategies, and before we are halfway through it becomes pretty clear that this is a series of 3, 4, or maybe more novels and novellas.All in all, not so bad.  But the typography and font usage is crude (the author uses underlines for emphasis, as if he did not know that these were printers instructions for italics) the science behind the SF is pretty much lacking and does not rely on state of the art physics, and there are some pretty clichéd scenes.  The Chinese commander Liao does not act very Chinese - there is nothing in her speech, thought or actions that would let the reader know her name was not Smith or Jones.  There is no cultural information.  The same is true for her mostly Chinese crew.But that is only the bad.  On the good side, Adams has fashioned an interesting First Contact - Alien- Space Opera that keeps one reading through to the end.  I have just ordered the second in the series (no promises beyond that), for which I paid full Kindle list price.  The series seems good enough to hold my interest, and I am eager to start the second entry, reviews of which seem even better than for this first entryThree stars might seem a low ranking, but it means I liked it enough to keep going and pay full list price for Part II (THE SANDS OF KARATHI) just before writing this review .  For free, or $0.99 or whatever it is going for now, you might want to give LACUNA a go as well.J.M. Tepper