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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 October 2014
I enjoyed this quite a lot although I felt there were a lot of flaws too.
Firstly what I liked: the plot has pace, there are a lot of action sequences that are very well written and believable. If you like space battles and fights against alien foes then this book is definitely for you.
What I liked less was the background to the story - it essentially is "the US Military go into space and save the day" even if there is a wafer thin line between the protagonists being actually the US. There is an underlying theme that the military are really good guys who just happen to be good at killing on the side of good "because it's what we do". The race they help out are shown as being almost blighted by thousands of years of peace needing our "warrior" friends to save them and show them the light of how to do violence properly. All a bit too gung-ho for my tastes.
There were also all sorts of open questions about the tech - a particularly unpleasant FTL drive was interesting but I always feel that if you introduce new tech you need some sort of consistent extrapolation from the theories we have to explain it and there was no attempt to do that and no exploration of the consequences that arise from faster than light travel like loss of causality. Basically you just have to suspect belief and treat it as a plot device.
Similarly there is a huge open question about the extra-terrestrial humans our heroes meet. Perhaps that is deliberately left open for future books but I felt it needed much more exploration to avoid being just another plot device. The other bad aliens are the old stalwart of "silicon based life" leading to a "those like us good, those very different bad" set up. Again all a little lacking in subtlety for my tastes but ok to set up the exciting battle sequences.
All in all enjoyable but not science fiction of the highest order. I'll read more of the series which is why I gave it 4 stars although if it were possible 3.5 would have been nearer my instinctive score.
Firstly what I liked: the plot has pace, there are a lot of action sequences that are very well written and believable. If you like space battles and fights against alien foes then this book is definitely for you.
What I liked less was the background to the story - it essentially is "the US Military go into space and save the day" even if there is a wafer thin line between the protagonists being actually the US. There is an underlying theme that the military are really good guys who just happen to be good at killing on the side of good "because it's what we do". The race they help out are shown as being almost blighted by thousands of years of peace needing our "warrior" friends to save them and show them the light of how to do violence properly. All a bit too gung-ho for my tastes.
There were also all sorts of open questions about the tech - a particularly unpleasant FTL drive was interesting but I always feel that if you introduce new tech you need some sort of consistent extrapolation from the theories we have to explain it and there was no attempt to do that and no exploration of the consequences that arise from faster than light travel like loss of causality. Basically you just have to suspect belief and treat it as a plot device.
Similarly there is a huge open question about the extra-terrestrial humans our heroes meet. Perhaps that is deliberately left open for future books but I felt it needed much more exploration to avoid being just another plot device. The other bad aliens are the old stalwart of "silicon based life" leading to a "those like us good, those very different bad" set up. Again all a little lacking in subtlety for my tastes but ok to set up the exciting battle sequences.
All in all enjoyable but not science fiction of the highest order. I'll read more of the series which is why I gave it 4 stars although if it were possible 3.5 would have been nearer my instinctive score.
