Humans, steadily expanding their occupied sphere of space, finally encounter their first aliens. Their civilisation far more ancient and their technology vastly more advanced than Humans, the Kreela could have wiped humans from space with virtually no effort but war, ritual fighting and honour form the corner stones of their culture with swords their preferred weapons of honour. To use their superior technology to exterminate the humans would disgrace that honour so instead they build weapons and a fleet of warships at a comparable technical level to those of the humans and eagerly embark on their greatest Challenge in many generations; a chance to die for their Empress, to win glory for Her Name.
This wasn’t a terrible book but it could have been so much better, the basic premises was interesting and had great potential even whilst being a little implausible. The writing was good if somewhat simplistic, it flowed well and made for very easy reading, it was even well edited with almost no spelling mistakes or glaringly bad grammar; all of which was a pleasant surprise for a self-published book who’s writing the author describes as “five months of hectic writing and editing ‘fun’.” Five months! Michael R Hicks has done a pretty impressive job of producing such a polished product in such a short time and for that he deserves credit but, sadly, though polished, it is really polished pulp. Now that is not necessarily a big criticism; I’ve read some excellent pulp over the years but churning out work at that rate does not, I suspect leave the author much time to really think about the nuances of the protagonists characters. Instead pretty much all of Hicks’ characters are two dimensional super heroes, back stories are quickly dropped in giving each of the major characters’ outstanding histories: this one was champion boxer at the academy, that one was champion wrestler at university, another is a master of martial arts, another rose through the ranks from poverty to be an admiral and another did the same to be a general and so on.
Far more time is spent describing the minutiae of the action sequences rather than developing either the characters or the plot; there is really very little plot development considering the book’s 400 odd pages. However those action sequences are good, dramatic and fast paced if maybe presented with rather more detail that was really necessary; and also tending to be liberally laced with an excessive number of blatant tear jerking individual sacrifices. There were also a number of sequences where Hicks was clearly determined to get a particular outcome, never mind how impossible the steps to that outcome might be.
If you are looking for a fast paced military SF story with no character ambiguity, filled with Hollywood heroics then you will almost certainly like, even love, this book and presumably its sequels – this book is actually the first of three Star Wars style prequels. Certainly Hicks does get a lot of rave reviews and five star ratings and many many years ago I probably would have joined them but sadly I now find this sort of writing rather too shallow for my tastes.
3/5 stars (which is maybe a little generous)
This wasn’t a terrible book but it could have been so much better, the basic premises was interesting and had great potential even whilst being a little implausible. The writing was good if somewhat simplistic, it flowed well and made for very easy reading, it was even well edited with almost no spelling mistakes or glaringly bad grammar; all of which was a pleasant surprise for a self-published book who’s writing the author describes as “five months of hectic writing and editing ‘fun’.” Five months! Michael R Hicks has done a pretty impressive job of producing such a polished product in such a short time and for that he deserves credit but, sadly, though polished, it is really polished pulp. Now that is not necessarily a big criticism; I’ve read some excellent pulp over the years but churning out work at that rate does not, I suspect leave the author much time to really think about the nuances of the protagonists characters. Instead pretty much all of Hicks’ characters are two dimensional super heroes, back stories are quickly dropped in giving each of the major characters’ outstanding histories: this one was champion boxer at the academy, that one was champion wrestler at university, another is a master of martial arts, another rose through the ranks from poverty to be an admiral and another did the same to be a general and so on.
Far more time is spent describing the minutiae of the action sequences rather than developing either the characters or the plot; there is really very little plot development considering the book’s 400 odd pages. However those action sequences are good, dramatic and fast paced if maybe presented with rather more detail that was really necessary; and also tending to be liberally laced with an excessive number of blatant tear jerking individual sacrifices. There were also a number of sequences where Hicks was clearly determined to get a particular outcome, never mind how impossible the steps to that outcome might be.
If you are looking for a fast paced military SF story with no character ambiguity, filled with Hollywood heroics then you will almost certainly like, even love, this book and presumably its sequels – this book is actually the first of three Star Wars style prequels. Certainly Hicks does get a lot of rave reviews and five star ratings and many many years ago I probably would have joined them but sadly I now find this sort of writing rather too shallow for my tastes.
3/5 stars (which is maybe a little generous)