Review: More Notable For Misses Than Hits
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 5, 2014
This is a book with a terrific idea but executed, for the most part, in a mediocre fashion. The plot is that aliens kidnap military people to use for mercenaries in their own wars leaving a good deal of destruction behind on Earth. They mysteriously ignore Earth's outposts in space - an omission later well explained in the book.From there, the book takes place on three stages. The first is the alien ship itself with its human captives. The second Earth's space outposts which are trying to save as much of humanity stranded on Earth as possible and, of course, Earth itself.The part taking place in the alien spacecraft is head and shoulders the most interesting part and it's also peopled with characters we get to know and care a bit about. Not so the other parts where there is no drama and we never get to really know the players aside from their names. We get most about the lead outpost character, Mason, but mostly we learn he likes to eat home cooked meals. As to the millions on Earth suffering and / or dying, we have no stories at all except from time to time they get feisty with their military overseers.The book is rife with silly technical improbabilities or even errors. The errors are as small as locating Jornada east of White Sands (it's west) or as large as saying the 'dirt' of Vesta, an asteroid, is being tilled for growing crops. Can't happen. Vesta can't have dirt for farming because that demands organics so even if you grind the rock up you end up with a dust good for growing lichen and little else.The author clearly wishes this to be a series and based on the high star ratings here, I'm sure it will be, but he also throws away so much by giving short shrift to almost every aspect of the plot from the battles the mercenaries fight to how they deal with the alien species they encounter to how the outposts manage to move, house, feed and keep entertained or busy 'two million' refugees.Maybe you'll like it more than I did. I'm obviously in the minority here.