Review: Lots of - strange - action
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 21, 2013
Three (and a half) starsThis genre-crossing novel starts out in the thick of things. At first, you think you’re reading a crime, mystery, or spy thriller, with some interesting flash-backs and a not-very-nice protagonist. About a third of the way through, though, its true nature is revealed: it’s sci-fi! I like the twist on time-travel; it’s well-described, but it doesn’t try to get too technical and trip itself up in the details. Although I was occasionally confused, it wasn’t bad enough to keep me from understanding the general gist of how things got to be the way they were and basically what the characters were trying to accomplish. And the action continues throughout the book, pretty much non-stop, Indiana-Jones/Star-Wars style.I had a few general issues and a few specific ones. Everyone’s an idiot except the main character(s). Only she seems to be able to figure out things that should be immediately obvious to people trained in investigation. I’m not at all sure why law enforcement was chasing her down and trying to kill her in various places; there didn’t seem to be enough evidence for them to be running around shooting at everything that moved. Speaking of that, a pet peeve: you do not ‘cock the hammer’ on any modern handgun, despite the penchant for TV characters to do so in order to make that nice little clicking sound.  I didn’t find the main character to be particularly likable, although I was interested enough in her story that it didn’t matter. I never did understand why everyone seemed to be so fond of Etta; I never developed any real feeling for her at all.More specifically, the book’s in desperate need of a good proofreading and edit. There are scads of errors, some of which make certain sentences completely unintelligible.  These range from calling characters by different names (Mazoff/Marzoff, Saliem/Sadiem) through misusing words that a spell-check won’t catch (bellow for below, waive for wave (many times), crate paper for crepe paper, etc.) through missing quotes, commas, incorrect apostrophes, and other punctuation errors.I’d definitely give this book another star if it was cleaned up, line-by-line.  There’s certainly enough here to continue the adventure through this world in subsequent books. The story’s there, and it’s fun. It just needs to also be readable.Recommended for sci-fi adventure fans in the Star Wars/Raiders genre.