Juls D. (dragynlady) reviewed An interesting idea and a lot of detail...but... on 6/30/2009 + 10 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 4

Ruthless aliens are on their way to Earth to eat us...

Ok - there's more to it than that but that's the basic idea. Earth has 5 years to get ready for the wave of hell on earth that is about to descend. The concept is basic but the author gets very bogged down in a lot of needless detail. There are so many acronyms in this book it gets distracting and unless a reader is very, very familiar with military terms and acronyms it can get tedious. This story-telling style is reminiscent of some of the later books in David Weber's Honor Harrington series where the word for word war room detailed discussions bore readers to death. Almost - but not quite. For a writer's first book, there are too many side plots and too many characters to pull off smoothly. There are loose ends and it is obvious that the writer intended this book to be the first of a series which is something I think only seasoned writers should do. Another issue is that though there is a woman warrior on the cover of the book, there is evidently only one minor female character in John Ringo's military and she is more concerned about her manicure than anything else. As a female reader, I wasn't pleased about her portrayal. Plot devices are thick in this book - the galactic technology in this story occupies the same niche as Merlin's magic in the story of Arthur.

All this having been said, I am interested in seeing what will happen when the Posleen get to Earth. I have hopes for this story and think it can get better. I will read book 2 of the series and see if it does. After all, I'm rooting for an Earth victory here!

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