PG's Books

I was somewhat split on my opinion of the first book in this series, primarily due to its somewhat strange “science”. I was hesitant to read the second book due to the book blurb which seemed to focus on some woman hating dipshit. I liked the second book a lot more than I thought I would though and I liked this one quite a lot!

Alexis is now a Lieutenant which I quite like since she now has some actual power to kick ass and she is quite good at that. I guess this is one of those books that you either like or do not like. If you are into hard core science fiction then my guess is that you wont like this book. If you can look past the “science” and just look at the adventure part, well then it is a great book.

This is really an old sailing ship era story, including pirates and all that kind of stuff, transformed into a space going era. It is quite well written. The characters are wonderful and it is a nice adventure filled with various kinds of action both in space and on the ground. Unfortunately the core of the story is a somewhat sad one where Alexis is taking part in a pretty botched up attempt to invade a planet, currently, belonging to the bad guys of this book series. As far as the core of the story goes I would say that it plays on a few British stereotypes. The bad guys are the Germans, The French cannot be bothered to pull their weight, apart from some especially heroic characters, and the British are the good guys (mostly). Well, it is a nice change from all the books where certain parties originating from the Middle East are the baddies at least.

The book is filled with anachronisms. Sailing ships in space, old fashioned habits, battling with broadsides from manually loaded and fired guns, gun ports, flogging as a punishment, etc. etc. It takes a bit of getting used even though there this book provides some explanation as to thy things are as they are to but now once I have gotten used to it I do like it. I did read a few of my fathers old sailing adventure books as a kid and this is really a mixture of those and the sci-fi stories that I like.

I have to say that I am a wee bit miffed about the ending though. Come on, Alexis pretty much saved the day including a heck of a lot of lives. The way she is treated at the end gives me very mixed feelings. I guess that the outcome was not too bad but it still stinks way to much of bureaucratic nonsense and pencil pushing. I especially grew a disliking for this psycho analyst or whatever that was evaluating Alexis after the main events. But then maybe that is the reaction that the author wanted.

Well, at least she got a command and I am definitely very keen on knowing where the story goes from there. I am quite sure that the backwater command, being “away from the front lines”, is not going to be what her superiors think. At least I hope it wont be. Looking forward to the next instalment in the series…