Michael R. Hicks (1) (1963–)

(Note: This review may contain spoilers. Consider yourself warned.)

So, I actually finished reading FINAL BATTLE two days ago. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to figure out how to write this review.

There was a short period of time where I considered just not reviewing it, because I’m kind of conflicted about it. I decided it was better to try and get my thoughts down rather than trying to keep them all bottled up, though, so here goes.

FINAL BATTLE is the third (and final) book of the IN show more HER NAME saga. It’s the epic conclusion to the story of Reza Gard which began in EMPIRE and continued on through CONFEDERATION.

I think that I can safely say that I really enjoyed about 90% of this book. The overall plot direction, continued character development and writing style are all very solid and continue Michael Hicks’ pattern of excellence. I continued to see the influence of science fiction greats, but they in no way overshadowed what is clearly Hicks’ own personality and focus shining through in a stirring, fantastic story.

Now comes the hard part. I have two quibbles with this book, and unfortunately, these aren’t minor ones.

Here’s the final score for those who’d like to know what I thought of the book without reading the spoilers.

For the grand conclusion to the saga of the fascinating Kreelans, overall plot direction and tight, page-turning storytelling, I would have given FINAL BATTLE a full 5 stars. However, my two not-so-minor quibbles with the ending force me to drop it to 4.

Read on if you’ve read the book, or if you don’t mind me basically giving away the ending. Otherwise, stop here and do not go on.

Final Score: 4 out of 5 stars. Recommended.

(Spoilers ahead. This is your last warning.)

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My problems arise within the last 5,000-10,000 words of the story. The antagonist, Markus Thorella, was never a particularly subtle character. He happily danced WAY on the far side of the Moral Event Horizon pretty much from the moment we met him, and Hicks did a great job making us hate this character for everything he did, especially how perfectly he set Reza up at the end of CONFEDERATION to prepare him for taking the fall for the events which set off FINAL BATTLE.

With how much I already gleefully hated Thorella, there was absolutely no reason for the frankly shocking and brutal scene near the end. I actually ended up having to skim it. I won’t go into the details deeply here in this review, but I felt that it was actually a bit gratuitous and unnecessary either for plot or character development.

Given this particular scene, however, it becomes several times more imperative that Reza finish him off in a satisfying manner, like he’d been promising for all of CONFEDERATION and FINAL BATTLE so far.

He doesn’t.

Yep, you read that right. Reza doesn’t actually deliver the killing blow that we’ve been expecting for two whole books.

I had a discussion about this with my wife and some friends after seeing Harry Potter 7.2 in the theater last weekend. Harry never actually has to make the choice to kill Voldemort – it’s taken care of for him by the villain’s own failings. In my eyes (and I realize that this is mostly subjective) this cheapens the hero’s accomplishments, because he never has to make the hard choice to do what has to be done. It’s all taken care of for him, and he gets to keep his hands clean.

What I found most odd about the end of FINAL BATTLE, though, is that Reza is in no way Harry Potter. He’s no children’s book hero, who’s forced to keep his hands clean because it’s ‘for the kids’. Reza is a cold-blooded killer, trained on an alien world, who has zero compunctions about slaughtering those who deserve it and doing what needs to be done. Yet he never delivers vengeance for all of the things that Thorella did to him and to those he loved, and that really disappointed me.

At the beginning of CONFEDERATION, we’re told that Reza knows that one day he will have to kill Markus Thorella. And yet it can be said that, by the end of FINAL BATTLE, Reza didn’t have anything to do with Thorella’s death. He died by misadventure, and I just couldn’t find it satisfying.

If Reza had fulfilled the promise made to us, I probably would have given the gratuitous brutal scene a pass… but with the two combined together, it unfortunately turned into a pretty serious disappointment for me. show less

At first I didn't like this one so much as it started out too much like David Weber & Steve White's Starfire series except with samurai tigers instead of people eating giant spiders. As the book went on it was interesting to see how the aliens developed and it became a 4 (really liked it). But, I seriously dislike the viewpoint of 'they are not like us so it's ok to kill every man, woman and child because they are not really people'.

There are hints that might change in later books. I'll show more read more to see where the story goes. show less

This is the first installment in the In Her Name Trilogy & wider space saga. I came into this one knowing nothing but the summary description about the story. I've jumped into another lengthy scifi saga & will have to add this one to my series rotation. I liked it but I found there were a few problems in the beginning. First, early on, it's a but repetitive in some ways. There would be a paragraph given about the Kreelan from their POV & then following would be the same information as the show more humans speculated or surmised it. Also, by the book summary, we know that there's only one survivor of the Aurora & pretty much who it is before we even get into depths of the story. For this reason, when I began reading, I was thinking that we would get to the survivor returning home to tell the story of what happened on the fateful meeting far sooner. Because that is not how the story plays out, I spent most of my time anticipating that actuality instead of being deeply riveted to what was unfolding in the moment. The summary information really takes away a lot of what could be great suspense in the battles because you know the humans aren't going to be victorious. The majority of the human characters were fairly pale in comparison to the Kreelan. As they were being dispatched at a pretty good clip, I didn't really get too attached to them. About 25% in, we're through all that & the story picks up & soars.

I'm a sucker for all the political drama you have to have in wide sweeping interstellar space stories, so I quite enjoyed all of that. I found it believable & was simply impressed with the number of characters that were juggled. Even though I didn't feel terribly deeply for any individual in particular (except Patty Coyle, she was my favorite character) I did feel for humanity as they embarked on this struggle. As main characters go, Ichiro Sato & Steph were not terribly interesting or at least not in any way that they overshadowed others. There are long enough stretches where they don't appear & when they popped back up it sometimes felt a bit abrupt. Also, one of them had some Mary Sue luck & when they wondered how & why they survived it, I wondered as well because it really made no sense other than the way the story ends needed them to survive. There was also some awkward moment after the main of the battle, where a soldier recognizes Steph but not because she's the famed reporter who framed Ichiro's story, no. Because Steph & Ichiro had been dating before the battle. This didn't make sense to me as it is clearly established earlier in the story that though they had been close for months leading up to the battle, they were "just friends" hence the tentativeness when the kiss lead to the hook up mere days before the battle began. That's not "dating" & I don't think Steph broadcast that via news feed & Ichiro isn't the sort to be chatty, so I don't know where that bit came from at all. By Steph's own words, she didn't know what she & Ichiro were or would be or what she even wanted in the relationship department as she was heading to cover the battle!

The Kreelans were very interesting & something to get used to. The lens through which they view life & the universe is most explained through Tesh-Dar. She's a supreme warrior priestess & sister to the sainted Empress, for whom all this warring & Bloodsong seeking goes on. The Kreelans were glorious, vicious & arrogant. I'm still not sure how I feel about them. I need to know more.

The one thing that I simply did not like at all was that the whole story is about fighting the Kreelans to protect Keran & in the end, the battle is done, the military pulls out & leaves abandoning the planet & the remaining survivors to the Kreelans to basically hunt & slaughter. WTH?! I wasn't expecting that & admit to having some hard feelings toward the rest of humanity for that one. I want some sort of retribution for that. I'll read the next in the series because I'm interested to know where this is going. show less

Ichiro Sato has committed a terrible sin. He survived.

When the crew of the Aurora makes unexpected first contact with a hostile race, midshipman Sato is spared from the slaughter in order to serve as the alien race's Messenger, harbinger of humanity's impending doom. They are going to invade. On the planet Keran. In two years. What kind of aliens are these? They kill everyone aboard and then give us enough warning to prepare for the coming fight? But is mankind ready to take the warning show more seriously? Or will politics and power jockeying leave us with our pants down when the fighting starts?

I'll start by saying that space war is not really my thing, but even so, First Contact is a wild ride. One of the strongest indie books I've read this year. This is an ensemble piece, with a number of POV characters carrying the camera through a frenetic interweaving of politics, military operations, and human drama. But despite the scope, it still manages to stay up close and focused on just a very few of those humans. The pace is excellent, the aliens are sufficiently alien, and the people are varied and distinct. For the most part. At times, I found myself struggling to remember which general was which. Or were they admirals? And who it was who still had the grenades. But that's exactly what I would expect to experience in the fog of war, as events accelerate and outpace our ability to keep it all neat and tidy in our heads. Ultimately, this is the story of one young man, and the choices he makes that will effect us all. I can only hope that when the time comes, we have somebody like Ichiro Sato on that first contact ship. show less