Lacuna

Didn’t read much. It’s not a crime to be anti American. Goodness knows there’s enough anti Chinese stuff that gets written. Maybe I missed a gem, but it also started out very uninteresting.

I love hard core space war Si-Fi. When an author creates a good story with believable science and characters everything comes together. But this book has neither. Also, as a veteran of both the Marine Corps and Air Force, I have a hard time believing the military aspect of this. Yes, I understand that at times people have been promoted above more senior peers — just ask General Eisenhower. It also happened to me once. But believing putting one in command of the top-of-the-line ships is hard to believe. And her conduct with other officers is ridicules. I did read more in this series. I just had to see where it was going. But I just couldn’t complete it.

I enjoyed this book.

That is my name to

If you don’t like a gripping, stressful story then by all means don’t read this book! I can only admire authors who have such imitations and can keep us in suspense until the very end!

I don't normally write reviews but this book is so bad that I had to say something. This book is written by someone who has paid very little attention to military, let alone a naval, tactics, strategy, operations, customs and traditions. Even the politics don't make sense. Not to mention the science. You want to make the reader believe the story is real, not so obviously sloppily slapped together as to sound ludicrously implausible. It's as if it were military SF written by a 2nd string couch potato who only played Halo and who thinks reality is just like the video game. I read this book cover to cover then tossed it as it was so utterly abysmal compared to what I've read from military SF greats like David Drake, Jack Campbell, David Weber, etc.. 1. Why would a junior officer like Melissa Liao be chosen to command a warship? The premise was that all other senior officers were killed in the first strike yet there was a slightly senior officer who became her First Officer and mutinied against her. Complete contradiction on the premise. No political entity would ever permit this considering the cost involved in building the ships. Even senior naval commanders with experience have been severely disciplined and removed from the command track for dinging ships and some political entity is going to stick an inexperienced junior officer as a warship commander? I seriously doubt it unless Melissa Liao singlehandedly fought off the first strike and she didn't—she had to be rescued from under fallen masonry by her paramour. 2. Also, a warship commander who gets violently nauseous in zero-G and it wasn't discovered by the medical boards? Seriously? And what's going to happen when the ship jinks violently during evasive maneuvers? Vomit everywhere coating sensitive electronics? Really? Why do you think military pilot cadets who fail the barf test flunk out of the combat pilot program? 3. Anybody who has ever served in the military or read extensively about it knows that fraternization between commanders of different hierarchies may be allowed if discreet and when completely off-duty ashore (and the captain of any vessel is never truly off-duty even then, not even when they are asleep), but it would be forbidden within the same hierarchy and anathema when going into combat operations together, especially when space is so vast and transportation between ships takes substantial time. Yet Melissa Liao spends actual physical sack time with her paramour who is the captain of another accompanying warship enroute to a combat op? Not bloody likely. No professional military commander(s) would do this. Not even if instantaneous teleportation were a part of the science involved. Anybody who doesn't understand this has no business commanding anything bigger than a rowboat operated solo, let alone a warship. 4. Anybody who has served aboard naval vessels of any country or has read extensively about them knows that there are certain traditions which are followed. If the author is unfamiliar with them, he should gloss them over and not go into detail, thus exposing his woeful lack of familiarity. If the author wants to create space opera with a military slant with glossed over details, then he should go study how Lois McMaster Bujold or Mike Shepherd does it. 5. There seems to be little understanding of the physics involved. Okay, let's say that there exists an inertia-less drive (something already postulated by Larry Niven in his extensive SF universe known as “Tales of Known Space”). What do you think will happen if the inertia-less drive/inertia-less field gets disabled during during combat ops and sudden acceleration (including jinking)? Everybody becomes just so much red smears of jam against the nearest bulkhead! Yet the characters sit through combat ops in dress uniform, no less. Not even space suits. And what happens when the ship is holed (the inertia-less drive does nothing about preventing holing and resultant decompression: oops)? There's no time to reach for space suits by then. And what do you think will happen to the ship if its bridge crew gets catastrophically hit? That's why First Officers are rarely in the bridge with the Captain during combat ops but located away in an alternate bridge for just this reason. It's total amateur hour here. I don't think the PLA Navy is this badly run even now, let alone when mankind becomes spacefaring and they would've learned a thing or two since. 6. Melissa Liao just destroyed an enemy ship and the sole survivor just starts cooperating fully because the survivor was saved by her from certain death at the hands of mutineers? Maybe I'm viewing this too anthropomorphically but this sounds implausible. Especially from a species who thinks nothing of wiping out entire cities (Beijing, Sydney and Tehran according to the book) just to send a message. What do they think is going to happen when the any species comes boiling out of their home system looking for retribution? A round of patty cake slaps on the wrist in retaliation? I think not. And the crew of any ship, even a scout, would be prepared for a very violent end if captured if they don't suicide first. This is neither military SF nor space opera. More like a teenager's first badly researched effort. It's pathetic what publishers will shove out these days.

This is a very exciting story that kept me up several nights until I finished it. The characters and confrontation situations are realistic. My rating of four stars would be five except that the story contained unnecessary sprinklings of foul language.

Poor plot. Juvenile characters. Weak grasp of material and lacked real imagination. Not very good sci-fi or writing at all.

Not a bad concept but chock full of cliche. Struck me as petty with a left slant. I won’t read the sequels because I don’t care for the implied and petty (and unrealistic) jabs at human society.

I will not read the remaining stories in the series. Idea was ok but the writing was not to my liking