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trike's review
2.0
There’s nothing new here, just some bog-standard Space Opera with your standard characters. It’s competent but not terribly engaging. It’s very much in the tradition of “Horatio Hornblower in spaaace”, which is fine if you’re into that sort of thing. I’ve just read far too much of this type of story over the years.
I might’ve bumped up the rating a bit if the aliens weren’t total ciphers. They act as forces of nature, which was ultimately unsatisfying because there was nothing to draw me into that aspect of the tale. Even a few more hints about them would’ve been nice, but that’s probably being saved for the sequels.
Although this says “book 1”, it’s set within an existing universe and some of these characters apparently have appeared in 10 (!!) previous novels. I should’ve looked that up before reading, which is on me, but it means I had no preexisting relationship with either this universe or these people. There isn’t any real explanation as to why the British empire exists into the far future, the backstory of which I assume is given in the numerous previous novels.
Added a lot of names to my list of spaceship names, but few of them were original, sadly.
I might’ve bumped up the rating a bit if the aliens weren’t total ciphers. They act as forces of nature, which was ultimately unsatisfying because there was nothing to draw me into that aspect of the tale. Even a few more hints about them would’ve been nice, but that’s probably being saved for the sequels.
Although this says “book 1”, it’s set within an existing universe and some of these characters apparently have appeared in 10 (!!) previous novels. I should’ve looked that up before reading, which is on me, but it means I had no preexisting relationship with either this universe or these people. There isn’t any real explanation as to why the British empire exists into the far future, the backstory of which I assume is given in the numerous previous novels.
Added a lot of names to my list of spaceship names, but few of them were original, sadly.
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