Craig

Military fiction needs peer review

Revisado: 12-18-22

Overall, an interesting underlying societal premise, with only normal levels of suspension of belief necessary to embrace it.

Nevertheless, authors who write military fiction would do well to have it reviewed by someone with military experience before publication to avoid annoying incongruities.

To mention a few here, admirals have barges, not gigs. No admiral, especially higher ranked admirals, captain ships. The respective jobs are incompatible for larger forces, and hard to manage even for the senior Captain who ends up in charge of a smaller force. Even if a Marine became a CO of a ship the size of an LHD, he would likely be at least a Lieutenant Colonel, more probably a Colonel, not a Major. USN LHDs are commanded by Navy Captains, equivalent to Marine Colonels. A Major is equivalent to a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. Destroyers and attack Subs are typically commanded by Commanders. The Admiral who died would have had a Captain as his Chief of Staff, and probably other Captains and Commanders on his staff. The Major would never have been in command of the task force. One of his seniors would have been. Et cetera.

None of these things are so horrible as to make the story unreadable, but they do serve to jolt the knowledgeable reader out of the flow. And they are easily avoidable.

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worst audio ever

Revisado: 10-01-22

An apparent attempt to imitate (parody?) old time sf radio shows made this unbearable

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Sci-fi is better with sci

Revisado: 07-11-21

The author seemed to have learned his science from tv fiction. His characters squabbled like adolescents. The dialog did not reflect any inherent high intelligence, with no wit, often stating the obvious. No more of this series for me.

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!!!!!!STOP YELLING!!!!!!

Revisado: 05-14-21

This had the potential to be very enjoyable read. Much witty humor, as well as some blunt force trauma humor, was interspersed throughout the story. BUT ALL THE CHARACTERS CONTINUALLY YELLED AT RANDOM INTERVALS WITH ABSOLUTELY NO CIRCUMSTANTIAL OR EMOTIONAL MOTIVATION MUCH OF THE TIME. It produced a mental picture of Japanese anime or manga, where the drawn character's face instantaneously changes from normal to tight eyed all open mouth fits of rage. Indeed, the story almost seemed like the author was trying to create a verbal anime. Unfortunately, the narrator did all too good a job of reproducing the auditory equivalent . . .

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esto le resultó útil a 13 personas

Juvenile

Revisado: 07-01-20

When I bought the book, I thought it was routine sci-fi. A little while into it, I wondered if I had gotten a young adult book aimed at 14 year olds. Well into it, it appeared to have been written by a 14 year old.

A couple of examples.

The heroes are all misogynists who treat their supposedly CIA trained field agent single female companion like a blonde joke, despite her being black haired, while sniggering like high school sophomores. Of course, if my companion, supposedly a trained CIA field agent on assignment, exhibited every cliche ever assigned to emotional women, I might too.

The heroes are shanghaied by accident aboard a huge interstellar craft, are asked by its Captain to pilot its shuttles, and instead of going to see the birds they will fly, immediately seek out the video game compartment.

The author casually consigns a US Navy Admiral to OCS after graduating from the Naval Academy.

The narration was hard to listen to. In addition to myriad mispronunciations, the narrator gives virtually all secondary characters a mid-Texas accent reminiscent of the Presidents Bush.

If I knew then . . . I wouldn't have wasted a credit.

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Ego

Revisado: 07-01-20

It takes some ego to think one can rewrite Heinlein's Starship Troopers better than the master. And if not better, why try. A mediocre and derivative listen.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Some good concepts, but tiresome writing

Revisado: 03-14-20

I read the first three in the series, but that is more than enough. I enjoyed exploring some of the new takes on several concepts as intriguing intellectual ideas, but much of the actual writing is lazy and tiresome. Too much of the book is written like the author seemed to imagine things would be, rather than as they are if one had actually experienced the events and places he writes about.

There is a lot of John Carter on Barsoom about this book. Nothing ever goes right, and only coincidence saves the heroes in most cases. Trite writing gimmicks are also used. E.g., there are way too many attempts to generate tension or suspense by telling the reader that a character heard, saw or found something but then artificially delaying saying what it was.

Moreover, for an author who chose Naval Officers as his primary male protagonists, his knowledge of Naval culture, ships, methodology and terminology is not even up to Hollywood standards. A laundry list would be overkill, but one glaring example was when the protagonist, a USN Commander, answered an Admiral’s direct operational order, “Yes, Sir.” Those who are or have been in the Naval services will know why this is jarring. The author does not.

Nor is he internally consistent. For example, after much puerile and unquestioning parroting of the “all government, especially the CIA” is incompetent and “they are all in it for personal agrandizement and power” lines, it is dedicated CIA operatives who extract his hero from mainland China’s security service.

The performer of the book, poor Scott Brick, who has done fine work on other books, is reduced to sounding like a scenery chewing ham actor by a lot of this over dramatic content. I can’t but feel he had to get tired of repeating that every revelation caused the characters to be stunned, speechless, or both.

This author needs a critical editor, and needs to listen to that editor’s advice, and then probably ends up with a very good read. With the absence of any novel concepts in book 3 to engage my intellect, however, I’m done with this series, at least one book too late.

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good effort but

Revisado: 07-01-19

The prior review that characterized the incessant insertions of awkwardly constructed date/time/time referent/location /unti designation /model data as "tiresome" was being kind. It made an otherwise above average book almost unbearable. That reviewer states he was in the military and allows as to how such labels might be necessary, but I was also in the military, in the Naval service, and I can say without hesitation those insertions sound incredibly amateurish and time wasting.
One example out of many that could be cited: "earth standard meridian date time". Aw come on. In real life, the standard for military time is Greenwich Mean Time, but is reduced in the military to "Zulu time". Even in formal reports. Putting aside Einsteinian quibbles about synchronicity after faster than light travel, all militaries would have found some short synonym for their standard time. Moreover, while a hyper specific set of chronological/spatial coordinates might be called for in official documentation of some incident, they are not called for as a prelude to narrative story telling. They do not add to the story, and they impede, rather than advancing the narrative. Similar issues apply to unit designations and repetitive equipment model numbers.
The book was otherwise a good effort, well worth the time to listen. While it appears that this author draws his military story devices from stuff he read, rather than from experience, he has cobbled together a pretty engaging story. I will not buy the sequel, however, if the audio sample shows that the annoying date/time etc references continue.

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Half-hearted Star Wars wannabe

Revisado: 05-29-18

Thinly disguised theft of Star Wars plot points and characters, without the vision. A forest moon? Aw, come on.

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Interesting premise, under researched

Revisado: 05-24-17

The basic premise, highly enriched u235 aboard a U Boat listed as scuttled today, had great possibilities, but for me was spoiled by a lack of basic knowledge of how the government reacts in these circumstances. The author either did not know about, or ignored, things like NEST, Nuclear Respnse Teams, destroyers, Naval air assets in nearby Jacksonville, Jacksonville Swat, Daytona, Swat, Coast Guard ships and air, and many other resources that would have been used at the first credible evidence of fissionables. Even before Islamic extremists
loose nuclear material was a big deal.

The possibility of the buried cache gave plenty of plot room without the need for storage lockers, while permitting a more realistic government response.

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