ZB13

ZB13

This is one of my favorite books. Great story telling. ( )

This is military science fiction from start to finish - battle after battle after battle, all described in great technical detail. Idolising the military at the expense of civilians, but that gripe aside I enjoyed this. Humanity is allied with a string of alien races against a stereotypical terrible alien foe. Given both those facts, you might expect the plot to be predictable, but actually it isn't quite as you might imagine, and apparently I will need to read the sequel to see how things pan out. If this is your kind of book, you'll love it, if it isn't it'll confirm all your prejudices about the genre. Personally I found it great escapism. ( )

Unlike the prior two books in the series, this one does relatively little swapping between story lines. Instead, it focuses on the events at a single place at a time. Once those events have resolves, the book moves on to a new location while some number of months go by off stage. This general structure works better than the tangled mess of plotlines that are used in the prior books.

The story is solid, and the characters are reasonably interesting. The book does end on somewhat of a cliffhanger, as the war as a whole is definitely not over yet. At least the end happens after a fairly major battle, so it's a reasonable place to stop.

Nothing particularly outstanding in this book, but also nothing that really causes problems. 4/5 ( )