Review: First book of an alien science fiction series.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 21, 2013
At the end of this book, the author makes a plea for a review regardless of the rating so that he can understand how his work comes off. OK, I will bite.I love Science Fiction - Alien stories. The fact that you included members of the LGBT community guaranteed that I would pick it up to sample.Kudos for including the LGBT members within your cast of characters.The alien invaders and their method of conquering earth (leaving humans to kill themselves off first) was good as it showed the darker side of mankind.Most all apocalypse stories come equipped with the authors political and personal world views of the woes of society. Yet, I thought you got a bit heavy on that. Commentaries on society are best when they are implied or spoken in passing, leaving the reader the option to buy what you are selling or not. If the author (through the MC narration) hammers too hard on their own personal spin, it takes away from the characters and the action of the plot (story).This reader got caught up in wanting to knock the main character on the head for his inconsistencies and double standards, so much so that I almost stopped reading altogether.  And so it took me 3 days to finish what should have taken me one, because I kept grumbling at his "logic".  In short: dial it back buddy.Next, This again goes to me as a reader, I can not get into a story if the characters in the story are inconsistent, stereotypical and or  not redeemable (I need to know that they are seeing their flaws and on their way to change). I found no redeemable qualities in several of your characters. Your protagonist is hardly a good guy and your antagonist (the military guys) are whom I would be cheering for. Your heroes are just as savage as your villains, in fact more so because we do not "know" the military characters back stories only that the "farm" council (who as I have already said have questionable morals) do not like them.  I want a hero, even if it is a flawed hero. I want to see the good vs. bad and your hero and for that matter the entire council hold no hope for saving society. They are self absorbed, morally questionable and frankly most of them are stereotypical, flat characters.So does that mean I hated the story? No. It was an "OK" read.I liked the world building that you did.  I thought the aliens and the method of battling them was original.Yet in the end, I do not know that I would pick up another episode in this series as I am not emotionally invested in your cast of characters enough to see what happens.Yet having stated all that, I think that readers of the Science Fiction genre may enjoy this title.