Review: Star Vigilante
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 17, 2013
While I found the basic story relatively interesting, in ways, it was somewhat predictable. I won't go into detail about the plot. There are other reviews which discuss the plot, but there are a few things which stand out for me.Some of the technology presented was more than interesting, and the author painted a universe quite different than usually portrayed. The universe is a dark place, full of death and uncertainty. I found this to be opposite the typical "space empires" novels (and altho this book is not about a space empire, the image should suffice), where everyone is a big happy family. The weaponry developed is on a par with this dangerous universe. Initially, they might seem like overkill, but as the story progresses, they fit in with the overall theme.The level and use of technology also reminded me somewhat of the old "cyberpunk" genre. The people in this book aren't "wireheads", and aren't "surfing the net" of a devastated near-future Earth, but when Matt jacks in and experiences his "ocean time" and talks about the sluggishness of "organic time", well, I feel the comparison with cyberpunk is not so far-fetched.But what really interested me was the ship itself, even before the climax of the story. The author closes the story with a good opportunity to continue to explore this universe.The author uses much techno-jargon, and sometimes, too much. Some of the jargon isn't really relevant, and feels like it was just used to either add words, or to try to add some sort of sense of "higher learning". For instance, the whole episode at the school, probably could have been significantly reduced without damaging the story, or the image.I also feel it necessary to comment on the editing, which was fairly tight, and it is always worth mentioning a good editing job. No major spelling errors, no real grammatical mistakes to interrupt the story flow. The flow of the story was mostly concise. There is a strange usage of capitalization in the story, which is almost in a German style, which capitalizes certain nouns, but not others. Some of the capitalization makes sense ("Suit", but never "the suit"; or "the Promise", which projects a sense of profundity), but some of the capitalization doesn't make sense ("But Business is business").