Review: Fast military science fiction apocalypse meshes with Empire series
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 19, 2014
The book was reasonably priced, fast paced and fun to read. BUT, I could not give it five stars because my credibility was strained too much by the author.  Slightly too simplistic and juvenile.If you treat him like a man, a prince who is a spoiled juvenile delinquent brat will turn into a leader with more common sense,self control and higher morals than the existing greedy power hungry leaders (all in a few months) ?  A teenage boy told to stop fooling around with the maids, just agrees after he has already gotten into the practice of having his way?  The author clearly does not like welfare state and self serving government  officials and sycophants.  But he carries things to such an extreme it fails to be credible.Credibility strains :A world of ninety billion people and nobodys fighting to preserve it.  The marines should have had some champion senators even if they were out voted.  Even the worst of times for the soviet system they acknowledged that equipment has physical limits and a poisoned food plant would have shutdown.  Food production with no batch numbers, so you can't separate  poisoned food?  The "bad" food smells differently but not bothering to tell people that?  An entire planet relying on imported food from other solar systems for anything besides basic algae bars? Space travel cannot be that cheap.  Nobody even set up some farms for the ultra rich, or on asteroids or the terraformed Mars...  Not being prepared for kamikaze attacks on space orbitals?  Even though he may not be reigning emperor on a devastated Earth, Roland  would clearly have significant value as figurehead for the any future empire.  Nobody is fighting to fix things?  A government willing to kill an entire underclass but afraid to inflict birth control?  The university students are so naive every technician in the empire must have come from off world.  If so the loss of Earth would be trivial to the Empire, should even make the Empire stronger as it shedded a parasite.  Even with implants and a marine jumping on a shuttle as it lifts off, holding on, climbing aboard through an airlock after it reaches space?Cannibals from the undercity running down people  on the sidewalk ...the author just pushes things too far to make his points.