Review: Excellent read, minor issues...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 25, 2011
I loved this book.  I literally almost couldn't put it down once I started reading.  It contains an excellent plot, well-developed characters and a good flow.I would rate this a 5-star if it weren't for some minor issues.  First were the many typo's littered through-out the book.  It could be that this issue is only on the Kindle version.  Second is two instances where minor characters in the story changed from one name to another and then back to the original name.  This happened regarding Professor Leung and again his female assistant.  While not overly horrible, the author, and definitely his editor, missed this glaring mistake.  For me it was quite distracting; I had to go back 3 times and re-read the several pages involved just to make sure I didn't miss something or perhaps that the Kindle version skipped a page or 3.  Unfortunately neither was the case.  Thirdly, while the vast majority of the book was written in the first-person perspective (and quite excellently by the way), there were at least 3 times where the author went from the first-person to the third-person perspective in regards to the main character and how he (the author and main character) was telling the story.  What I mean is throughout the vast story it was told from Lt. Padilla's perspective, like he was giving a narative.  In the 3 instances I mention, instead of it being something alongs the lines of "Elian and I wearily sat down at the bar" it was Robert and Elian sat down at the bar.  This is something that the editor, again, should have caught.  The author too, but I can understand how it happened.  Writing in the first person perspective is a lot harder than in the typical third-person perspective.  If an author is writing in the first-person perspective, it's extremely easy to revert to third-person and not even realize it since we all virtually write that way.  The last 2 issues I noted are most assuredly Kindle e-version problems.  The first was the lack of ANY chapters.  I find it hard that the hard-copy version was written that way.  And the last was right at the very end.  The Kindle version skipped at least one page, if not more.  The author was describing, I assume, why the two factions of the "bugs" were trying to kill the other, the mind-set if you will.  The last few sentences in the Kindle version pick up right in the middle of the sentence describing this, and possibly why the first 5 flotillas of "bugs" attacked the human fleet outright.I know it looks like there was more wrong with the story than what was right.  That's not the case.  I absolutely loved this story.  It kept me grossly entertained, laughing out loud and up all night reading.  I'm looking forward to more stories from this author.  It's a book I'd highly recommend to anyone reading the sci-fi genre.