Review: A thrilling ride
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 14, 2013
I plunged in, expecting a time skip of a couple of hundred years. To my surprise, the book pick up right where Koban left us. After a short period of refamiliarizing myself with the characters, I was again totally absorbed. The pace of the story is slightly faster than I expected, with events happening rapidly, maybe a bit too rapidly. Wasn't this supposed to be 1000 years war? Still, despite the surprisingly fast pace, the story is as engrossing as ever, and just like Koban, finished too soon, as every chapter was more interesting than the one before. So many interesting turns, could be fertile ground for dozen of books, if the author had the time, but to be fair, although shorter  than the first book, this sequel still took me 2 days to finish, and is substantialy larger than the average size sci-fi novel, as well as better edited. I noticed only 2 typos, which were quickly forgotten. I believe it's fairly priced. What makes the book so interesting for me, is the artificial evolution concept, which I've seldom seen implemented so drastically. The themes of building up a new society, and implementing new knowledge or technology also play a factor. War and the interesting aliens as well, to a lesser degree. "lesser" because the Space opera and war aspect of the story is a bit weak: the 2 space battles showed no strategy and only very simple tactics. this is explained in the story, through the inexperience of humans, and the disinterest of the Krall for space warfare. The lack of strategy in ground warfare is also a bit disapointing, but once again, well exlained as this is not really a "war" as far as the Krall are concerned, but a game with a specific goal and with set rules, and the humans capabilities are too far behind to make it a real contest. Neverthless, with the way the Krall limit themselves, a good strategic mind could probably still have won the war against this foe despite their superior technology and capabilities, even without the Kobani. That's the only weakness of this story really for me. The enemy is not scary enough where it counts, their mind. they are a bit too simple, which makes the humans look like they really have forgotten a lot about war. But apart from that, I loved every second, and I am looking forward to the sequel. A lot of fascinating tangents to explore: war has been the catalyst of lot of technology progress, and social changes on the human side. Hope to see what the Kobani make of the wider universe soon.