Review: slow motion political adventure with need to put someone down
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 5, 2014
After a boring conversation among ex-military buddies, which I finally just skipped over, there is an intriguing opener whereby they are abducted and turn the tables on their careless captors, taking over a star ship.  Then what do you do?  Mostly you have long, boring conversations about right-wing politics, discrediting everyone and everything, claiming that if only the environmentalists weren't in the way we'd long ago have had space colonies.  I have worked 40 years in space R&D; and the plain fact is we need 20 to 30 doublings of the per capita energy consumption of humans for spaceflight.  There are no free rides.  This author imagines star ships that operate without fuel (he never mentions fuel once).After taking over the star ship, they basically wait for the alien "horde" (rather than civilization) to come looking for it, and trick them out of two more without losing a single one of their ex-soldiers.  Pretty much a rosey scenario.  I was mildly interested in what would happen when things finally hit the fan so I kept reading, or speed reading over some pretty dull conversation.  There are some negative reactions on earth, but [spoilers coming] the president basically rolls over and allows this ex-military jock to become dictator of all outer space.  The serious flaw in this novel and the reason I gave it a negative rather than neutral rating is that no one in Steve's informal organization is every jealous or envious or challenges whether he is qualified to lead.  And while the author roundly criticizes "the Horde" for denigrating their own techies, he imagines not one techie among the earth types, only ex-military, their spouses, and maybe one diplomat coming on board late.  OK, I won't go so far as to tell you what fraction of earth is destroyed when the entire Horde finally comes looking for its ships, or how they manage to keep from losing earth entirely.