Review: Pulpish Action Tale
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 10 3, 2012
(More of a 3 1/2 star rating than a 3 star rating.  Hey, Amazon, we need 1/2 stars!)I'm a big sci-fi fan, especially of Honor Harrington-esque type stories so, despite the unpleasantness in the comment section (now removed), I decided to give it try.As this is the first installment of a larger work, the story is short and the plot moves at a brisk pace.  We join the story in progress where Jessica King has inherited command after the ship's Captain is killed in action.  Returning to port for repairs, the acting-Captain and crew have a short respite before the enemy finds them again and the ship must hastily flee before their foe's superior firepower.  A random maneuver meant to out-fox their pursuers goes dramatically wrong when the ship and crew are sucked into a black hole.  Instead of crushing them into nothingness, the black hole sends them and their pursuer... someplace else.  And they're not alone.The author's writing style is clean and polished which make this a quick and easy read.  The newly field promoted Captain, Jessica King, is a likeable protagonist with just the right amount of vulnerability to temper her steel.  Secondary characters aren't as well fleshed out but each has a reasonably unique personality.  Part 1 of the series does what it needs to do - establish the characters and setting and then gets the plot moving.There are a few negatives but how much weight a potential reader should put on them depends on what they're looking for in these type of stories.The dialogue and character interaction are very Trek-ish.  This might bother readers expecting a more traditionally military approach with the rank-aware protocol that would entail.  Also, I had to suppress a giggle at a reptiliod threating to blow someone to 'smithereens."My preference is for self-contained stories so I was bothered a bit by some of the terminology that appeared to be direct references to works mentioned in the product description.  Things such as "polarized hull plating" (Star Trek Enterprise) and "Koenig-Prime" (Star Trek-TOS) while others appear to be a nod toward Star Wars ("Corellian Turn") and the ship's jump drives may be a reference to the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.  I found that to be a distraction while other readers might like such shout-outs.  Then again, if the product description hadn't mentioned it I might not have been 'primed' to see connections where they may have not been intended.Finally, and this is a "flaw" present in a LOT of sci-fi that doesn't tend toward the harder end of the spectrum, there were a few tactical maneuvers and elements in the story that I found a bit incredible.  The aforementioned "Corellian Turn" being the most egregious example.  Readers that hew to Delbert Trew's saying, "don't let facts get in the way of a good story" might not mind but all I could think of was "but...the energy required to....but the inertia...but how close they would have to be for that to work....but...but...but.."I deducted a half-point for each of those issues but the underlying story and it's technical execution are good so I can recommend it for anyone looking for a pulp-ish serial story.