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Book Reviews - Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction - By an Adult for Adults

The War of Words – YA Fantasy Fiction by Amy Neftzger

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The blurb for The War Of Words sounded so intriguing I had to try it despite it being YA fantasy.  An evil sorcerer has enveloped the land in a spell of confusion and unreality, sending mysterious shadows to battle the king’s army.  I love words, how could I not want to read a book about a war on language?

Main character Kelsey, whom the king assigned to the army, discovers a man burning reams of paper, each covered with a single word, during a battle.  She knows this is somehow related to the unreality but not how or how to stop it.

Kelsey works with her friends to find out the sorcerer’s plans and weaknesses, all while battling the never-ending shadows and trying to stay out of trouble with the army general.  Her friends are students at a school behind the castle wall, protected from the confusion spells, and an apprentice wizard Nicholas, his teacher Moss and gargoyle Newton.

Good Points

The scenes with Kelsey and the sorcerer, and the general with the sorcerer and finally the king with the sorcerer were well done.  Amy Neftzger imagined how words would look if we could see them colored as to intent and meaning, a very good way to show the tension among the enemies.

Neftzger did a nice job coming up with a plot that is a true problem:  How do you fight against a creeping sense of unreality, when no one can trust what they see or hear, when one’s words and speech are misheard and lost?  I would like to see her use this same plot idea in an adult book with better characters and interesting back story.

YA Fantasy Problems

The War Of Words jumped around, things seemed to just happen, it felt out of tune.  Characters came and went without introduction nor did we find any time to learn about them as people.  Kids took the lead to find the problem, devise the solution, then lead the fight, just as a kid would imagine things to work.

The book felt like a sequel, although the NetGalley blurb did not say it was.  Author Amy Neftzger’s wrote two prior books, The Orphanage of Miracles and The Orchard of Hope, in The Kingdom Wars series that used the same characters and back story.  Perhaps if I’d read those the characters would have felt real.

On the good side The War of Words did not have the romantic tripe that keeps slithering out of YA fantasy, no 16 year old girls who capture the hearts of immortal demigods, no love triangles, no gonadal driven decision making, no histrionics.  The kids were good kids who want to do what’s right.  That was a huge plus.

Summary

Reading The War of Words as an adult and rating it for adults I’d give it 2 stars. I would not have finished it had I not gotten it from NetGalley, but it wasn’t a bad book, just not a book for adults.

Trying to put myself in the reading chair of a teen longing for challenges and the chance to be heroic, I’d say 4 stars.  I don’t think kids would mind the way it jumps from character to character nor the sense that scenes were unfinished, discarded too quickly.  Kids would enjoy it more if they were familiar with the characters already from the other two books.

13 Hours – Attack on Americans – Defended

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The book 13 Hours is not:

  • A novel
  • A political tirade
  • An expose
  • An examination whether our government deliberately misled about the terrorist involvement
  • A prescription to avoid future incidents
  • A blame cast (although it’s obvious that there is plenty to blame if one wanted)

13 Hours is an hour-by-hour account of the time immediately before, during and after the September 11, 2012 Benghazi attack on the US consular office and CIA annex as seen by, acted by, thought and felt by the surviving members of the “annex security team”.  The security team members were ex-military men contracted to provide extra security to the CIA case officers present in Benghazi, Libya.

I was impressed by the care the authors took to avoid compromising security or blaming others by name.  Naturally they were furious about certain measures, notably that the local CIA security chief “Bob” (not his real name) insisted on relying on local Libyan militia and, per their narrative, insisted on delaying the response to the first attack on the local consular office while he tried to reach the local militia leaders.  They used matter of fact, timeline narration to show their incredulous anger at the delay, during which two American consular staff and the US Ambassador to Libya were holed up in a burning residence.

They raised several points simply by stating the facts and narrating their response.  For example, the consular office had no fire suppression or breathing masks, the local CIA chief seemed more interested in protecting the CIA mission secrecy than in responding to the crisis, the local militia were mixed quality and uncertain loyalty, and someone was able to fire mortars accurately onto the roof of a house-sized building.  (The authors stated a mortar team needs exact coordinates to be that accurate – which leads one to wonder how the attackers got those coordinates.)

13 Hours does an excellent job making us see the security personnel as people instead of as faceless contractors, or stereotyped ex-military mercenary hard noses.  They included several maps of local Benghazi and of the two compounds that helped set context.  (Before reading I had the impression the “CIA annex” was in the same compound as the ambassador’s temporary residence when in fact it was about 2 miles away.)

Overall this is a sad book with an unhappy ending.  The attacks killed the US ambassador, a computer expert and two of the contractors. The security team helped the few dozen other American staff to leave Benghazi alive.

Compliments to the authors for bringing a horrific situation to life via matter of fact, calm narratives instead of indulging in blame or rage.  4 Stars

Old Money – Outdoors, Mystery and Suspense in Mississippi by Bobby Cole

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Old Money combines an old plot line, the search for missing cash, with new twists.  Jake Crosby is our hero, but instead of the usual private investigator or detective, Jake is a game warden charged with enforcing Mississippi’s game laws not with handling stolen cash or murderous siblings.

Jake and his partner Virgil are called in to help the local sheriff investigate who assaulted a doctor in the woods after a day hunting and left him nearly dead.  This assault happens early in the novel and we circle back to it only later.

Respected federal judge Rothbone asks Jake to keep an eye on the Bolivar twins whom he suspects of trying to get revenge on him for sentencing their father to prison.  Judge Rothbone has an ulterior motive for keeping tabs on the twins.  He knows they are searching for their father’s reputed $3MM of fraudulent money and he would like some of it to pay for his wife’s grey market kidney transplant.

Jake and Virgil enlist help to bug the Bolivar twins’ home and discover that the twins are trying to sell a helmet from the De Soto expedition back in the 1500s that they claim their dad found on federal property.  The helmet is a fake and the twins are just trying to scam the buyer but Jake and Virgil don’t realize this and are pursuing the case because it’s illegal to take artifacts from federal property.  The FBI is interested in the sale because the buyer will use his own counterfeit cash to pay for it.

Plot

We have 6 players:  The two Bolivar twins (who are not above scamming each other), their dad’s old cellmate whom they suspect knows where the cash is, the wanna be helmet buyer, the FBI, the judge and our two game wardens.

The side scams complicate the plot and make the book more interesting, especially when we readers know that Jake and Virgil are hot on the track of basically nothing and meanwhile the judge has set Jake up to spy for him and the twins plan to murder their father’s old cellmate once he tells them where the money is.

The Judge subplot felt the weakest and could have been edited out to make a tighter, faster paced book. Cole added it to give Judge Rothbone rationale to point Jake at the Bolivar twins but the original cover story – that the Judge feared retaliation – was reason enough.  The Judge’s family problems didn’t add anything to the story.

The pace is fairly slow initially and accelerates the last 20% of the book with a super fast finish that mostly ties up the loose ends.  The good guys win and the bad guys don’t.

Pacing

I remember my 10th grade English teacher telling me to show, not describe, and it’s hard.  Unfortunately author Bobby Cole describes far too much.  The novel would be better is Cole replaced the descriptions of what the characters think and feel with actions that shows us those thoughts and feelings.

For example, Jake’s wife Morgan worries about the family finances.  Cole shows Morgan with her checkbook trying to pay bills and thinking of cost cutting she can do.  Then he gives us four paragraphs describing the situation and and Morgan’s worries about Jake’s career change from stockbroker to game warden.  We could have seen the tension with a short scene between the two of them.

I wonder whether Cole would have needed much less description if he had shrunk the plot.

Characters

Jake, Virgil and the ex-cellmate are the best done characters.  We can feel Jake’s ambition to make good as a game warden, to protect the wildlife and serve the outdoors.  Cole lets us see Jake’s chagrin when he discovers that game wardens get caught up in plenty of non-wildlife situations, including helping people cope with the weather.  It’s easy to see why Jake gets excited when he thinks he’s on the track of artifacts looted from federal land.

Virgil is coasting through his career but he isn’t dead wood and he too wants to serve the countryside and people.

The ex-cellmate is interesting because he’s an authentic con man himself, recognizes the twins want to get the secrets out of him then kill him, but decides to gamble on finding the cash himself.  Cole got the balance nicely between the con artist’s risk vs. reward equations.

The Bolivar twins are left as nasty enigmas without any positive qualities and the judge feels lifeless.

Overall

I didn’t realize Old Money (A Jake Crosby Thriller Book 3) was part of a series until several pages into the book.  I don’t think it affected my enjoyment of the story since Cole gives us plenty of look backs to set up the plot and people.

While I won’t be looking for more books by Cole or more of the Jake Crosby novels, this was a decent read.  Kudos to Cole for creating an unusual setting and characters.

For myself, 3 stars.  For someone more fond of mystery and suspense, 4 stars.

I received an advanced E book through NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik, Excellent Fantasy for Adults, Magic vs. Malevolence

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Uprooted by Naomi Novik is one of the best novels I’ve read in the past year.  It has the emotional depth that adults enjoy along with the straightforward story of good vs. evil, magic vs. despair with great characters.

Author Novik  sets Uprooted in the kingdom of Polnya, a standard late-medieval place threatened by the neighboring kingdom of Rosya on one side and the malevolent magic of the Wood on the other.  The Dragon, foremost wizard of Polnya, lives in the tower in the Spindle Valley to guard against the encroachment of the Wood.  When the Wood takes over people or animals they are corrupted, lost inside of themselves and a grave danger to everyone.

Characters

I loved Novik’s heroine, Agnieszka.  She has internal strength that even she doesn’t realize and she’s not afraid to put her life on the line for people, especially her friends.

The growing love affair between Agnieszka and the Dragon feels real.  When they work magic together they blend their hearts and work together intimately.  Agnieszka can see beneath the Dragon’s scowls and snide comments and she knows he loves beauty, whether in people, or things or magic.

Agnieszka’s magic is very different from the Dragon’s.  Hers is song and ad hoc, nothing formal while his is sharp, crisp, clean edged and powerful. They are stronger together than separate and the intimacy grows each time they combine magic.

I’m tired of books with girls who are strong in the sense of physically strong, or extra special strong in magic or whatever, standard kick-ass types.  I like reading books about people who are strong because they have strong characters.  Courage, determination, honor, love, cherishing people, generosity and stewardship are all qualities that make people strong, and Agnieszka and the Dragon have these.

Plot

The book begins when the Dragon selects Agnieszka to serve him for 10 years – but he forgets to tell her he selected her because she has magic.  Agnieszka and everyone else assumes he will choose her best friend, Kasia, and she can’t fathom why he took her.  After a couple days the Dragon begins teaching Agnieszka – but once more he doesn’t tell her that’s what he’s doing – and she hates it.  Doing magic the Dragon’s way leaves her exhausted.

Agnieszka realizes her magic is valuable when her home village summons the Dragon to stop corrupted cattle and wolves, but he has left to attend another monster.  She stumbles into the type of magic that she can do – ad hoc, more wandering and less of a highway – very powerful.  She and the Dragon begin working together in earnest.

The plot is excellent, fast moving, with lots of intrigue and blind alleys along the way.

Mood

Uprooted is excellent at conveying mood.  We feel Agnieszka’s fear and loathing early, then the ever-present threat of the Wood keeps a sense of worry and drives her and the Dragon to develop her skills. Novik does a great job with setting the Wood up as a dark, evil force that is just there, never goes away, never stops being a threat even when it is not overtly challenging.  We feel Agnieszka’s terror when she fights off the wolves, when she rescues Kasia, when she flees the capital with the royal children, when she and the Dragon fight the Wood together.

Then the Wood turns and becomes more a normal forest, still a bit scary with dangerous, hate-filled creatures, but not the malevolent entity it had been.  We feel lighter along with Agnieszka.

Uprooted isn’t all danger and fear.  It has love and even quiet humor.

Other Thoughts

Like many novels with younger characters, Uprooted is classified as YA Fiction.  It is not.  It is a novel for adults, one that older teens will love, but one that we older people will find richer and deeper.

Be aware there are 2 sex scenes.

Overall this is 5 stars.  Excellent book with deeply realistic characters and a memorable sense of mood and emotion.

Personal Note

Uprooted is going to stick with me a long, long time.  It spoke to something important.

Something about the relationship between Agnieszka and the Dragon reminded me of something I read long ago but cannot recall, perhaps something by Patricia McKillip.   I kept hearing an echo but cannot remember what it is an echo of, rather frustrating since I enjoyed whatever the earlier book was and would like to reread it.

The Shadow Throne, Book 3 of The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen

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Jennifer Nielsen kept the same frantic pace with The Shadow Throne, the final book in her Ascendance trilogy as with the first two, but this third book felt flat, predictable and a bit silly.  Jaron, now the king of Carthya, knows that Avenia captured Imogen only to use her as a tool against him, yet he insists on going himself to free her.

Of course he gets captured, then tortured, which was the weakest and least readable part of the book.  King Vargan and his army commanders vacillate between wanting Jaron to cough up his military plans, or to force him to agree to bind his country to King Vargan of Avenia or, apparently they just wanted to hurt him.

Jaron acts like a clever thief, not like a king and the book is weaker for it.  Some of Jaron’s escapades are entertaining, as when he blows up the cannons sent to destroy his capital.  Some escapades reminded me of the nick-of-time rescues in the old Robin Hood television show.  He has an healed broken leg the whole time he’s prancing around Carthya and Avenia, dodging armies, rescuing friends, blowing up dams.

The characters didn’t seem important, more like pawns set up to fill the action.  I didn’t much like Jaron, he was a bit too selfish to be the real king he felt he was meant to be.  The ending where he somehow pulls a rescue out of the woodwork was fun reading but contrived.

I read The Shadow Throne right after finishing the second book, The Runaway King.  It was sort of like the feeling you get after eating a bunch of Halloween candy, yummy at the time but you really do know better.  I mostly enjoyed it even while recognizing the faults and despite getting bogged down in the very long section where Jaron is imprisoned.  (You can read my reviews of the The Runaway King here, and of The False Prince here.)

The Shadow Throne: Book 3 of The Ascendance Trilogy is the final book in the series, and wraps up the loose ends.  If you read the first two books you’ll want to read this just to find out what happens but be warned, it isn’t as good as the first two novels.

3 Stars

The Runaway King, Book 2 of The Ascendance Trilogy by Jennifer Nielsen

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As the title notes, The Runaway King: Book 2 of the Ascendance Trilogy is the second book in the Ascendance series that features Sage, grown to take the throw under his rightful name, Jaron.  (See here for my review of the first book, The False Prince.)  Jaron is threatened within his kingdom of Carthya, by ambitious regents who seek to push him aside or use him as a puppet, and from the outside by King Vargan of Avenia, greedy to add Carthya to his rule.

Jaron suffers from extreme foot in mouth disease, incurable optimism, self confidence and unbelievable skills he honed for thievery, climbing, undoing chains and ropes, pick pocketing.  The book opens with an assassination attempt that leaves Jaron an ultimatum:  deliver himself to the pirates who already tried to kill him, or see his kingdom destroyed.  Jaron knows the pirates work closely with King Vargan.

King Vargan offers to take a spring in exchange for peace, such a good deal, otherwise known as tribute or appeasement.  Jaron’s father had made many such small-seeming concessions over his reign, leaving Vargan eager to take the rest.  Jaron refuses the deal.

From that point on the book moves at light speed, with Jaron joining the pirates under an assumed name, intending to turn the pirates into his men, his allies.  An audacious move, it nearly works.

Characters

Prince, then King Jaron, is both a cardboard creature and a person.  He is most stereotyped when acting as a thief, the bold challenger, the escape artist.  He is best developed when we see hints of his true nobility and kingship, as when he realizes that to give into Vargan once means giving him over all of Carthya, with timing the only question.

Love interest Imogen is a little more developed in The Runaway King than in The False Prince, but still a little weak.  It’s not clear why she and Jaron fall for each other.  Princess Amarinda is better drawn and an attractive character.  Jaron’s other friends and sometime foes are interesting but secondary.

Thoughts About The Runaway King

The Ascendance series is fantasy without a trace of magic.   You’ll find no wizards, no witches or sorcery.  Books like this, set in semi-medieval kingdoms with fast paced action, depend on the characters and the interesting plots.  Author Jennifer Nielsen does a good job with both, aligning the series to the older teen audience that enjoys plots and fun more than vampires and dystopian apocalypse.

I was restless and looking for something fun when I re-read my review for The False Prince and decided to check out the sequels from our local E library.  I’m glad I did as this was perfect for the evening.  Adults looking for a fast, enjoyable read that doesn’t challenge with a ton of mysterious magic or oddball names will enjoy this too.

4 Stars for adults, 5 for teens.

The Long Way Down – Nasty, Demon-Filled Las Vegas Sorcery

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It’s hard to like a book when you don’t like the characters.  Daniel Faust, the sorta hero in The Long Way Down, is a Las Vegas sorcerer who earns just enough to keep a roof over his head but not enough to stay clear of the seedy side of the town.    Daniel works as a private investigator – not clear whether licensed or informal – and takes on cases involving porno producers, half-demons and murders.

Daniel is meant to be the Good Guy here.  He takes on a case to investigate the murder of a young porno actress, discovers she was murdered, and works out vengeance on her murderer.  The vengeance turns out far worse than he had planned and spirals out to wreck havoc on a group intent on opening the Etruscan Box.

The The Long Way Down moves fast, which is a good thing as otherwise you’ll feel coated with the gunk under your bathroom drain.  The characters are all unpleasant, even Daniel.  If you think about it, a guy who’s willing to impersonate a snuff film maker in order to have revenge, is not the kind of person you want to spend time with.  His heart is supposedly on the side of the good and the true, but his actions show a man willing to murder – but only in the name of righteousness – and to steal and to cohabitate with a succubus.

Sorry, not my kind of guy.

The characters are well done, although icky, and a few are too nasty to be believable.  The best part is the setting.  I’ve not been to Las Vegas but this felt real.

Most novels with creatures from Hell feature good guys who fight the demons; Daniel in The Long Way Down cooperates with his girlfriend/succubus Caitlin to stop the apocalypse.  Daniel is too fascinated with Caitlin to wonder why her boss, demon prince Sitri, wants to avoid the apocalypse.

I finished The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust Book 1)  mostly out of curiosity, but wish I hadn’t.  It left me feeling depressed and not at all interested in further books about the character. The blurb for Craig Schaefer’s second book, Redemption Song, has Daniel enmeshed in the plots of Prince Sitri in order to keep his “girlfriend”, succubus Caitlin.  Anyone with the sense God gave a gnat knows to steer away from demons and the schemes of hell, but apparently Daniel didn’t figure this out.  I shan’t be reading this one as it sounds even more depressing and with more unpleasant characters.

3 Stars

Creepy Scary Snoopiness – The God’s Eye View by Barry Eisler

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The God’s Eye View starts off mild, then builds suspense at the same time we start caring about the characters.

Evie Gallagher like any mother, wants to take care of her young son, Dash.  Dash is deaf and Evie is divorced, with her ex-husband only peripherally involved so Evie needs her job.  Evie is good at her work and enjoys the technical challenges and the trust and access to her boss, Anders.  Evie’s job?  She’s an analyst at the NSA and her boss is the director.

Anders is also fanatical about building complete surveillance, complete information access on everybody and complete ability to track and monitor everyone.  He’s amoral and manipulative and sees everything he does as good for the country.  In other words he is one scary, creepy menace.

The Plot

Evie keeps her head down and does her job developing a tracking system that leads her to discover a high up NSA stationed in Turkey has contacted a “subversive” journalist.  Evie reports that contact to Anders and also asks him whether her report about a CIA analyst in contact with a different “subversive” had anything to do with the analyst’s reported suicide the next day.  Anders denies it, but she can’t quite trust him – but she does not want to suspect him.

The plot builds from here.  Anders calls in his favorite nasty guys to take down the two men in Turkey, but one of the take downs, meant to be a straightforward kidnapping/murder, backfires when the kidnappers go public with their captive.  Meanwhile Anders discovers that the high NSA official, now dead, very likely knew of his pet project, God’s Eye.  Anders goes into high gear to stomp out any possibility of his project becoming public.

The book moves fast.  Evie is smart and connects the dots all too soon for Anders who orders her death.  Unfortunately for him, one of his nasty guys, Manus, has fallen for Evie and protects her.  Anders spins out of control, not caring who or how many people he has to kill in order to protect his big secrets.

The end is satisfying but not conclusive.  Big Brother is still out there, just a bit less virulent.

Characters

The people are well done, especially the main antagonists, Evie and Ander.  Eisler shows how someone like Anders, a decorated veteran, patriot, dedicated to serving his country, could go so far into the dark side.  Evie is easy to understand.  She’s smart, she enjoys being good at her work, she loves her son and needs the best job she can get in order to send him to the special school.  The two nasties are less detailed, sufficient for the story.

Backstory

The God’s Eye View is darn scary.  We know we don’t get the full story in the news and we know we can’t trust the government to be the shining city on the hill we all hope it to be.  Author Barry Eisler uses headlines and the fallout from the Eric Snowden affair to craft an excellent story.  With luck it will help us all question what we read and see.

Overall I’d give The God’s Eye View 4 stars.  Very well done, reasonably enjoyable and scary as heck.

Dear County Agent Guy – Dairy Farmer Wisdom and Wit – Jerry Nelson

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Jerry Nelson says he got his start as a humor columnist when he sent a letter to the county agent asking for help removing cattails, ducks and tourists from his flooded field one wet North Dakota spring.  The agent suggested he try writing a column for farm magazines.  Jerry was successful and now with Dear County Agent Guy: Calf Pulling, Husband Training, and Other Curious Dispatches from a Midwestern Dairy Farmer we non farm magazine readers can enjoy the his work too.

Jerry Nelson writes simply and from himself and the result is a series of funny articles that read from the heart, not at all contrived.  His columns range from memories growing up, courting his wife, suggesting his wife’s obstetrician use a calf puller on the slow-to-arrive oldest child and thoughts about raising kids, thrift and farming.  I enjoyed them.

The columns are funny because Nelson finds humor in simple, every day things.  He is not mean nor contemptuous nor snide nor sarcastic.  There is a wide streak of potty humor with a couple stories about changing diapers, handling manure, not bathing and using the side of the barn as a convenient substitute for the indoor bathroom.  Even though I’m not crazy about potty humor the stories were in good fun and a couple of the jokes were pretty funny.

Nelson never preaches or comes across as advising people on how to run their lives, or to save money or to enjoy the outdoors and friends and family.  Nonetheless it’s obvious that these virtues are among the reasons he is happy and if anyone wants to emulate him, well, they got a few good suggestions.

Dear County Agent Guy will appeal to anyone who enjoys the outdoors, not just farmers.  Nelson explains the farming background with minimal detail, enough to clarify what he’s talking about but not so much that we readers feel we need to become dairy farmers to enjoy his work.

I received an advance copy through NetGalley in expectation of an honest review.  The E book could use some copy editing to clean up the format.  The overall writing needs little editing – for one thing these were taken from magazine columns and for another Nelson’s style is good and his sentences, spelling and such are already readable.

Overall I would give this 4 stars.

Impulse New Hard Science Fiction Novel by Dave Bara

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A couple weeks ago Penguin Books sent me a hard back copy of Impulse: Lightship Chronicles, Book One; it arrived in the mailbox with no note so I guess I must have won a giveaway but who knows.  I took it with me on a flight to San Antonio, read it, moderately enjoyed it, packed it back to take home.  A week later I could not remember anything about the story other than it was OK but had a lot of holes.  I had to open it back up to recall anything about the plot or characters.

Once recalled I did remember the book, which is an amazing medley of good and awful.  On the good side the back story is intriguing and author Dave Bara could do a lot of stories set there.  We have the successors to two sides in an interstellar civil war who are now on the same side, cooperating and looking for more planets to bring back into the fold, the Earth Historians who are Yoda-like characters except with their own infighting and factions, the Sri, who combine Dark Lord of the Sith qualities with scientific brilliance, the remnants of the old Corporate Empire and allusions to mysterious Forerunners.  Right there we have the nucleus for many fine story telling opportunities.

The plot moves pretty fast with protagonist Peter serving on Impulse, a joint operation from Quantar (Peter’s home) and Carinthia to understand the attack on the ship Impulse and to seek other groups that survived the war.  Peter does all sorts of heroic deeds and gains a nifty Forerunner artifact (of unknown capability) plus ends up engaged to the princess of a different planet.  All in a days work for our hero!

The main problems with the book are the contradictions and ridiculous actions.  For example:

Peter is on his first assignment after the military college, yet is promoted to lieutenant commander and is the third senior officer on the ship.  True, he is the son of the soon-to-be planetary director but I had a hard time believing that any amount of nepotism would propel someone this high, especially when serving under a captain from Carinthia.

The Impulse captain and executive officer both leave the ship on shuttles to recreate an attack that nearly wiped out a different ship.  They left fully expecting to be attacked, and left Peter in charge.  Even to this non military expert that seems like dereliction of duty.  Surely there is another way to diagnose an attack than by recreating it with crewed shuttles, and no captain and first officer simultaneously would jaunt off leaving college boy in charge.  To top it off, Peter then delegates command to the non naval Historian, someone definitely not in the chain of command; that’s illegal.

Then when they are attacked Peter has to rescue them from a “hydrazine fire”.  My memories from chemistry class are dim, but hydrazine is a nifty rocket fuel that would burn mighty hot and mighty quick.

Right after Peter joins the Impulse the crew pressures him to wear the Carinthian uniform, not the Unified Space nor Quantar uniform.  He refuses, then the captain suddenly acts like it was all a big joke, hazing.  It didn’t read like a joke and I don’t think it added anything to the story.  Even my zero military knowledge says that’s not good manners or smart practice.  Nor does it make any sense that a navy lieutenant commander would outrank a marine colonel.  These are small errors that shake the reader out of book trance.

There is another scene where the executive officer is setting explosive charges but doesn’t know how and is unwilling to have Peter (who is expert) do it.  Hmm.  Again, this doesn’t seem like good military practice; certainly in the corporate world we expect senior management to delegate to the person best able to do a task.

The biggest sour note was the relationship and dialogue with Levant, a third planet ruled by a prince.  During a social reception the prince first twists Peter’s arm to marry his sister, then demands full access to the Unified Quantar/Carinthia/Earth technology – and gets both.  The prince has the repulsive habit of demanding something, hearing he can have it in 10 days and demanding it in 5.  (I used to hate this behavior.  It is disrespectful and in practice yields really bad results since everyone will sandbag whatever they say.)  Peter and the rest don’t seem to mind and give in to every demand and speed up.

The book has several goofy scientific problems, such as a geosynchronous orbit only 300 miles up, but overall I can ignore science errors when the story moves along and the characters are interesting.  With Impulse we have the outline of a good story universe, potentially interesting characters and problems, but we don’t have a finished novel.  Impulse is Dave Bara’s first novel and I hope and expect he will improve his craftsmanship – and if writing science fiction or stories with military landscapes that he learns the basics.

Overall I’d give this 2 or 3 stars.  I won’t look for book 2 in the series, Starbound: Volume Two of the Lightship Chronicles, which is out.  The fact I couldn’t recall anything about Impulse a week after reading says it all.