Review: Readable but somewhat mediocre
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 20, 2013
This book was somewhat of an impulse-buy. I knew nothing of it, nor anything of the author, when it popped up on my feed with new sci-fi books from Amazon. I thought the blurb sounded somewhat interesting so I bought it. It has some slight likeness to David Weber’s first book (Mutineer’s Moon, Dahak #1) in Empire From The Ashes although on a much less grandiose scale. It is a readable book and not without merit but nevertheless a fairly mediocre one.The general concept is a good basis for the story and the discoveries, both by the Imperials waking up from hibernation on the moon and on Earth as well as by the Earth inhabitants, is good reading even though much of it is somewhat naive and simplistic. The build-up towards fighting off the invasion fleet as well as (most) of the action at the end of the book was also enjoyable to read. I do like these passages with chock effects where someone, alien or human, shows some unsuspecting human a spaceship or something similar for the first time.However, there are a few things that drags the book down to a fairly mediocre level. The names of the Imperials are downright silly and the author insists on using both first and last names every time someone is referenced for a good chunk of the book which is just tedious to read. The legal consent form at the beginning of the book was just silly. Around the middle of the book a lot of time is spent on re-discovering and digging out the remaining imperial bases on Earth. That is well enough but after the second base it started to become repetitive.The real downer came during the final action though. The leader of the alien invasion force turned out to be incredibly stubborn and downright stupid. During the in-space fighting this was bearable but once his remaining forces entered Earth’s atmosphere it became increasingly annoying. The final episodes with the surviving elements of these cybernetic aliens literally storming onto the beaches was more on the level of some old Japanese monster movie than anything else.The actual end with the aftermath was also somewhat lacking. What about the empire? Not a word about going out and trying to find out what actually happened but mostly just a load of small-talk about the imperials settling down on Earth. And the final couple of sections with the leader of the invasion forces was just stupid as well as of a cruelness not fitting with the rest of the book.The book had a lot of promise and was not without merit but in the end it only became a somewhat mediocre reading. It would have gotten 2 1/2 stars if you could give half stars but it isn't worth 3 as far as I am concerned.