Review: Strong, but a cliffhanger
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 23, 2013
Like previous books, this one has both ground pounder and fleet battles. More attention is paid to the groundpounder viewpoint as that's where the main character's role is, but the fleet perspective is still very well done.Bottom line I took one star off because of the ending. At the first of the book the author sets the expectation that this will wrap up a big arc and conclude a big piece of the story. It just doesn't. What the author really does is simply open up additional plot threads, there isn't any closure. Furthermore the author genuinely could have given us a few more chapters and still had his hooks in us for the next volume. It's insult to injury because the author is now going to work on two different series before coming back to this universe, which means a very long time waiting. I'll have long forgotten this series by the time it comes back and will have to re-read everything... so why such an ending? A few more pages giving us a clue what those new plot threads would even be about would have been harmless.Good:-Author does great job with alien cultures and shares their perspective-Combat, guts, and glory-Creative new tech, innovation, trickery (without spoiling anything, one word: Mechs!)-A lot of plot progression-Sorilla character continues to shine and grow-The universe's complexity and detail continues to grow nicely with this bookBad:-No single truly memorable event in this book (like the last one when Sorilla was free-fallling down the space elevator cable and still shot a ton of bad guys, then grabbed the cable and slid the rest of the way down)-Ending. C'mon author... just a few more chapters! You throw that ending out there and leave us hanging like that for the next year or two?-Trying to refer back to DARPA Arpanet? That whole side effort was a bit awkward and unrealistic, even for sci-fi/fantasy. (Anyone knowledeable enough to get the reference is going to groan.)-Constant allusion that humans are something super-special in comparison to other races doesn't really seem to balance with the rest of the universe and how the author presents all the alien races. Unique is fine, special attributes are fine, but somehow better than the other races in so many different ways? Unless this plays into the story somewhere further down the road it leaves an awkward feel every time some other race says "ooh the humans really seem to be better than all other races at X/Y/Z - I better watch out!"A good book though.