Review: Maybe 2.5 stars
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 11 16, 2013
This book is rather unfortunate in the sense that it had the potential to be a 4-star read, but the author got in way. I really had the feeling that he just lacked the experience to realize he was slowly strangling a nice storyline through an almost insanely pedantic narrative.What is strange though is how the book not only didn't start this way, but the initial 1/3 was, in fact, almost the polar opposite approach: fast paced, action and dialog driven, reader left guessing some at the yet unexplained world/details. I was actually thinking that it moved too fast, in some places reading more like an outline of events rather than a story.  I was ok with that because it moved fast and remained fresh and interesting...it was obvious that I was in the hands of a new author, but my mindset was tilted towards "+1 for effort" as opposed to nitpicking.The book is, however, broken into 3 "books", each book changing focus/perspective to a different character. I'm not a fan of this technique in general, and as used here it is a fail. The 3 books focus on (in order): The Warrior, The Scientist, then The Academician. I can't say that the book would've been more successful had the author chosen to interweave the stories throughout (it might've killed 100% of the book instead of just last 2/3rds), however I believe that should've been the goal.The Warrior book is pretty good for the reasons already stated. The Scientist book seemed to start of ok (perhaps I was feeling charitable given the speedride of book #1), but it quickly devolved into massive dissertations regarding genetic science and research. To say this killed the flow would be a generous understatement.Book 3, The Academician, is just painful to read. I have not (yet?) finished the book and am discouraged by the fact that actually skipping entire chapters fails to move the story along. We begin with a retelling of the entire history of the Order, and then to "break it up" a bit, the author has the character say he's tired of talking, but here is my journal...go read it. Then the next page starts with his journal...ouch. Reading history text books is slightly more interesting...at least it actually happened.I don't actually like coming down so hard on a new author, so let me end on a positive note. Book #1 demonstrated a talent for writing both action sequences and maintaining a nice clip as the story unfolds. If anything, it needed to slow down a bit and allow more character and world development...but it had enough interesting ideas beneath the surface to keep me wondering where we were going.And the author has a lot of interesting ideas. He just needs to figure out how to express them in a way that isn't pedantic lecture or history lesson.