Review: 4-star book with 5-star potential
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 09 2, 2013
Mr. Currie has shown in his previous books that I've read (the 3 previous installments of this series and the Odyssey series) that he's a terrific author of high-tech sci-fi.  This book, The Valhalla Call, is good, but not great like his other books.The biggest, most glaring and, for an author, almost sales-killing problem with this book is the editing.  In his previous books, the editing was virtually spot-on.  In TVC, though, it's like he didn't spend any length of time editing.  I wholly understand that self-publishers are understood to have more errors in spelling, grammar, etc. than professionally published books.  Mr. Currie has shown in his previous books that good editing can eliminate most, if not all, errors of this nature if enough time is taking on said editing.  TVC has so many spelling/grammatical errors in it that it almost appears that he only gave the book a cursory glance when it came time to edit.  I'd say that he simply used the spellchecker on MS Word (or whatever equivalent writing program he uses) and called it good; however, there were some errors that even spellchecker would flag.  Mr. Currie, please spend some time and either go back and thoroughly edit TVC or get someone to do it for you.Another problem, and one that's been noted by other reviewers, is how quickly the book was wrapped up.  Like some of those reviewers, I felt that Mr. Currie rushed to end the book.  I felt that he simply, perhaps, got tired of working on TVC and decided to just end it.  It could use a few more chapters and/or a much more thorough epilogue.  This also leads into another big problem with TVC......And that is there were a number of cliffhangers.  Some of these are fairly minor, but a few of them left big, big questions on my part.-)What happened to the Sentinel Kris? (minor)-)Numerous time there were allusions to the Ross El having vested interest in the Hayden system, to the point that the Master of Ships of the Alliance fleet had to wonder if something was hidden there.  There was no continuation, conclusion or even hint of what it was.  Thinking back through the earlier books, I can't recall anything in them that hinted at something special about Hayden. (major)-)The possible wormhole on the Ross El ship that Aida captured...(fairly minor)-)It being mentioned that the Ross El now considered nothing but total war, total annihilation of humans as the only acceptable end to the conflict.  Yet...the Alliance sends a peace representative in the epilogue.  With the Ross El as part of the alliance, this in conflict with what was stated earlier in the book.  Plus let's not forget that nothing was said as to what SOL was considering with the peace envoy...peace or continued war?(major)-)The top secret, secret-squirrel stuff the President was talking about in which he asked if it was wrong to do the right thing from time to time. (minor)-)The disappearance of TFV and the Alliance fleet.  All that was explained was for a split second they rewrote the laws of physics.  That's it.  Nothing more.  Not a hint or attempt at explanation at what happened.  That leaves us, the readers, wondering or pondering possible outcomes that Mr. Currie had in mind. (major!)Now, I'll freely admit that Mr. Currie mentions in the forward that there will be upcoming stories in the same universe with some of the same characters.  He may wrap up the aforementioned cliffhangers to one degree or another, but I can't help but wonder if he won't, either.  It's one thing to leave a cliffhanger in an on-going series, but he clearly stated that this arc of the books was concluded with TVC.  Leaving such major cliffhangers out in the wind is something that he should've avoided.  Or at least concluded to a degree that left an obvious allusion to tying into another arc in these book's universe.Now, that being said, don't think that there isn't anything good about this book.  Over all, I very much enjoyed TVC.  I read it in a day simply because it was that good.  Mr. Currie does good work with both boots-on-the-ground and fleet action.  There is plenty of action and humor in the book.  Most of the high-tech stuff was fairly believable, however, some parts I had to read a time or two to understand what Mr. Currie was attempting to explain.All in all, I rate this as a 4-star book.  It would've rated as a 5-star in my opinion but because of the problem listed above, I can't even consider giving a 5-star.  It had potential to be even better than the three previous installments in this series, but fell just short.