Review: has a lot of promise
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 19, 2012
The book was up for free last week so based on the large number of good reviews I grabbed it.I give the book good marks for creativity and action. There is a fair amount of both in this story of a foppish dandy who turns into a warrior almost overnight.I have to give it really bad marks for the lack of proofing and editing. There are mistakes on almost every page. Mostly word order, missing words, and wrong words. Things like using the word "boarder" when "border" would be appropriate, or "were" instead of "where". Just so many mistakes that it almost ruined the book for me.I could complain about the inconsistent science created, or the lack of understanding of just how big space is and how long it takes to get someplace when not traveling FTL. Or the bizarre time compression of the story. Things happen way too fast. Our hero manages to take an almost untrained and severely undermanned crew and turn it into a cohesive fighting unit literally overnight. One of the harder things to swallow for me. To be honest, I much prefer my military fiction to have at least some believability to it, and much of the military stuff presented in this book is just not believable. In some places it struck me as a fantasy of an author with little clue about military operations. Not that I am a military expert, but the author shows over and over again that he is not.There are a series of 1 star reviews of the book that present a number of legitimate points about issues with the book that a potential buyer would do well to consider before spending good money. I think the regular price is only 99 cents, so even if the book aggravates you, you are only out 99 cents, and I think that is refundable if you return the book within 7 days. As 99 cent books go, it is acceptable to me. YMMV.But, despite its flaws I liked it, and despite the flaws annoying me almost continuously, I was able to finish it. It is quite a long book (> 7000 locations) so it had the chance to annoy me enough that I would have quit on it, but I didn't quit, so I gave it 3 stars.I think a professional edit job could turn it into a much better book that would actually deserve all the 4 and 5 star reviews it has.