Review: Pro: It's free, Con: did the author read it at all?
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 11 13, 2011
I like SF space opera when it's well done (such as the Gap series by Stephen Donaldson and the Culture series by Iain Banks) and I can even enjoy the space cowboy genre of folks like David Drake. So I was prepared to like this, and to give the author a bit of room since it's free.The thing I most like about this book is that from the very beginning you know that there is a key element and the author kept me curious enough to read through to the end to find out what the series will hinge on, and you don't learn this until the very end. That suggests that the author has promise.Having said that, this first novel in what is to be a series is pretty weak. First, there are way too much grammatical sloppiness that even a quick run-through with Word's checker could have found, as I'm sure they're just typos.I'm also bothered by the fact that too often the author doesn't seem to be paying attention to what he's writing: For instance, in one scene the protagonist takes a shower, gets dressed, and then "splashes his face with water". Huh? In the paragraph after the shower?  Perhaps the author should have gotten someone to proof it for him.The other thing that bothers me is that the characters are completely flat and all stereotypes. This isn't uncommon in in the space cowboy arena, but what enables the writing of people like Donaldson and Banks to rise about this is 1) character development and 2) creation of elaborate and interesting science and technologies.Perhaps Sanders will improve.