A review by trike
The Trials by Linda Nagata

2.0

This was nowhere near as good as the first book, sadly. The first third with the actual trial of Lt. James Shelley and the Apocalypse Squad wasn’t very interesting. Instead of channeling the excellence of A Few Good Men it felt like a weaker episode of Law & Order. Then Shelley hooks up with his former handler Delphi who just so happens to be a gorgeous babe (eyeroll) as they are targeted by a vengeful billionaire who tries to kill them himself (eyeroll redux). And then there are adventures on the high seas, ambushes, even a space ride to do an orbital heist of a Howard Hughes-like paranoid hypochondriac billionaire living on a private space station and the coincidences pile up faster than the dead bodies. I don’t even know how many times Shelley gets saved because someone else blocked the bullet or explosion or grenade or shrapnel or god knows what. It was a lot. Dude’s luckier than James Bond crossed with a cat carrying a rabbit’s foot and a leprechaun’s four leaf clover.