Review: Surprisingly Decent
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 27, 2014
This popped up on my Kindle recommended list and after reading the author bio, big time RTS and FPS gamer, I downloaded the sample for a laugh, expecting an Age of Empire or StarCraft battle report set on space ships. After the sample I was surprised and wanted to continue reading.Was this ground breaking military sci-fi? No. Was it basically a PvP gaming session in space? Yes but the interesting thing about it was that it was done well on both accounts, it was especially well done for a first effort from a new author.The positives included an alien enemy just as capable as their human counterparts, different but even tech levels that were plausible and not over done, creation of tense battle scenes where the outcome was consistently in doubt to the very end, limited dues ex machina, the bane of almost all military sci-fi, that was limited to just one scene and even that was semi-plausible and heroes that you could "almost" care about.I use quotes around the word almost to emphasize the most glaring weakness of the book and that is the total lack of background info and world building.  Without reference to these areas the reasons to grow to care for the characters or their motivations becomes mute. There was plenty of room to include much more background info and fluff in order to flesh out the world in which the conflict was taking place, this would allow the reader to gain a greater understanding of the issues involved with the conflict and the motivations of it's main protagonists, barring this a nice appendix would have sufficed.There were editing, grammar and formatting issues, but not so overwhelming they detracted from the story flow.  This author could easily write a 4 star story, and for the price structure would buy and recommend another try from him.  I would just caution that relying to much on gaming experience can come across as a guy who logged on with his friends and played against another group and won and then wrote up a well done battle report, a true author would immerse the reader, not only in the story, but in the universe as well.