Review: Good story ruined by a complete absense of proofreading.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 6, 2014
Note: Yes, I heard an updated version was released that I'm assuming was cleaned up. But I bought and read this book in its original release version, that is the version I'm reviewing.In this story we get to see the humanization of Sorilla Aida. She's always been an incredibly interesting character that was well developed, but now we get a peek at her motivations and the heartache caused by some of her previous missions. The plot itself was another highlight as we get to see the Alliance as an imperfect political conglomeration of separate worlds that seem to only be members because of a fear of two powerful species that keep each other in check. Even though Currie seemed to be pre-apologizing for this story in the foreword, I found it compelling and a great introduction into what I assume will be a interesting continuation of the series.So, there were many, many high points to this story. Frankly, they were the only reason I kept reading and the only reason this book gets three stars and not one. The bad? There was at LEAST one significant error on every single page, and that is no exaggeration. These ranged from wrong word used, missing words, repeated words, misspelled words, wrong names used for characters and alien species, capitalization errors, punctuation errors.... It was so bad I refuse to believe that this wasn't just a rough draft that got tossed up for sale. This would have been bad for even a first time author offering his/her work for .99, but this is a well established author writing in a well established series and charging $5 a pop. It's an insult to the readers that he couldn't be bothered to make sure the book was edited and polished before it went up on sale. Now here's the kicker... this is the exact same problem with the previous book in this series. That one was also simply loaded with errors that were corrected at a later date. (I pulled my review of that book since the author decided to attack the review in the comments section and it was a conversation I had no interest engaging in.)Currie is one of the more imaginative authors out right now, but presenting such an unprofessional product while simultaneously charging premium prices for a self-published work is a habit I don't find endearing. So, my choices are to simply give up on these stories (because the editing is that bad when it comes to trying to enjoy them) or remember not to buy a book from this author until a month after the initial release.