Warship

Warship - Monique Happy, Joshua Dalzelle This is a pretty good piece of military science fiction that should please most people that are into these kind of books. It is perhaps somewhat light reading but it is a good adventure story with plenty of likable characters, a good somewhat mysterious enemy and quite good ship versus ship action.

This is the, not too original, story about a hero that is not exactly in favour by the upper brass of the navy he is on. Partly because of his origin (Earth) but also because a lot of the upper brass is appointed, not by virtue of their competence, but by their political skills and their support from the usually incompetent politicians.

Not too surprisingly our hero have to fight an uphill battle, even after it is evident that there is a clear and present threat to humanity. Also not to surprising he manages to come out pretty much on top much owing to the fact that he is indeed a good starship captain.

The book introduces several characters, some of which start off being not so likeable. However in a few twists, some more unexpected than others, a lot of the characters turns out to be not only likeable but even allies of our hero. I quite liked the Aston Lynch / Pike character. He was one of the more surprising twists in the story.

One thing that I really liked with this book is that the despicable, manipulating, useless and generally destructive politicians do not really get the upper hand. On the contrary, the worst of them gets the very treatment that I whish we could bestow on some of our present day useless oxygen wasters.

As a whole this was a pleasant, perhaps somewhat quick, read that is well enough written, has nice characters and have ship to ship combat that can stand up to the work of some of the better authors in the genre.