Review: absorbing read, great characters, well done
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 13, 2012
I found Admiral's Gambit, the sequel to Admiral Who, to be a great fun to read.  It was absorbing military science fiction.  Comparing Admiral's Gambit to other Kindle-published military sci-fi, I'd say that the characters are generally much more interesting and better crafted.  The interplay of an advanced technical culture with a medieval level feudal culture is also really intriguing.  As mulitary sci-fi goes, Admiral's Gambit is on the soft side (less technical) and really makes no attempt to get into velocities and vectors in space battles, but importantly, the battles make sense and there are still lots of tactics, and the tactics include interpersonal character driven tactics.  The Admiral is a bit reminiscent to me of a young James T. Kirk in style which is, well, just plain fist-pumping awesome fun. The only reason that this novel does not get a fifth star from me is that I found it sort of petered out at the end and failed to adequately explain the final action.  I don't know what it is with Kindle-published works, but this sort of lapse in quality at the end seems unfortunately quite common.  It really needed another 20-30 pages to end well.  However, I have no doubt that the next installment in the series will pick things up where they left off and I'm looking forward to reading it when it becomes available.This book does a great job of avoiding smutty sex and anti-Christian themes.