Really enjoying this series. The characters and overall plot start out pretty flat, but both grow interesting and engaging as the story goes on. ( )

Very good. Surprised me by how good much I enjoyed it.

Artificial intelligence, wormholes, self-healing ships, just to name a few... sure, some of the ideas in the book are far-fetched, but isn't that why we read Science Fiction?

The ideas and plot-lines introduced by Lalonde promise some very interesting tales to come. ( )

Not what I expected. In classic space opera form there is the huge overarching society. There is a man loyal to that society who comes to find out things are far different than they seem, and is required to hide his new found knowledge, until the point where he breaks away completely. The aliens in the series and their technology were fabulous. This is a long series of books available at Smashwords for free. They all start with Spinward and are numbered. I recommend them for those of you who enjoy a good space opera as I do. ( )

Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins is the first book of the Spinward Fringe Series by Randolph Lalonde. Origins (as I will refer to it from here on) is, at least at the time of this review, a free e-book for Kindle users. However, subsequent books (read: broadcasts) in the series do cost money.

The premise of Origins is that Jonas Valent and his merry little band, have been illegally hacking into Freeground Station’s military servers, partaking in their battle simulations, and to the surprise of the brass, been trumping the instructors and trainees at their own game. Unfortunately, Valent and his group are caught, but an Admiral is willing waive their time in prison if Valent agrees to take command of a real ship and crew and go on an actual, top-secret, dangerous mission. Well, Valent does just that, and our heroes are off on an adventure, with the stated objective of building alliances and gathering technology that will be beneficial to the Freeground Nation in a coming war. Unfortunately they almost immediately begin to inadvertently make enemies and find themselves on the run, pursued by more powerful forces.

That’s really all there is to the story of Origins. The book itself is divided up into a trilogy of novellas called, Freeground, Limbo, and Starfree Port, respectively. Freeground introduces us to the characters, setting, technology, and the universe they live in. It’s largely there for exposition and to give our heroes a jumping off point for their adventure. Limbo details the low-point in our heroes’ struggle against the antagonists, and Starfree Port has the heroes taking the fight back to the bad guys.

To be honest, I wasn’t really blown away by Origins. The premise is somewhat interesting and the hard science-fiction setting is nice, but the writing leaves a lot to be desired. I found Limbo to be the most interesting part of the book because we see the good guys in a real bad situation with no hope of escape. I’m not going to spoil it, but in terms of story, I found it to be the strongest part of the novel. The remaining two parts seemed to repeat the same conventions over and over. Basically, Valent and company get into to trouble, ship is damaged, ship is repaired, ship is upgraded, life goes on.

The characters themselves seem to be cookie-cutter archetypes. We have Jonas Valent at the helm, as the perfect Captain; his love interest and wrench wench Ayan, as the perfect engineer; gun-nut Oz, as the perfect security officer; ace pilot Minh, as the perfect fighter pilot, and a bunch of other supporting characters we care nothing about. Do you see the pattern here? The characters themselves are rather bland. They have few, if any, flaws. While they do have personality and they do undergo some character development, I simply found them rather uninteresting. Furthermore, we don’t really meet the antagonists in person until we get into the Limbo part of the book. In fact, that part is the only part we have any major interaction between the good-guys and the bad-guys, and that interaction itself is fairly brief. In short, we never get to know the antagonists very well.

I guess Lalonde tried to create a balance between military and space-opera science-fiction, but the military aspects of the story didn’t really appeal to me. It could best be described as “mildly military”. The way the characters interact with each other almost makes them seem like kids playing soldier out in their back yard. There is justification given for this in the dialogue, but it comes off as rather strange and stereotypical.

In terms of what science is presented in the story, it does go into some degree of depth about the ship they’re on, its weapons systems, and defensive countermeasures. However, it’s more or less just there for exposition. Apparently in this universe, all technology is standardized and thus every time they upgrade their ship with new weapons or systems, they have absolutely no problem installing it. At one point they even steal the entire mainframe computer core from an enemy carrier for their own use. Of course, as mentioned above, the acquisition of new technology is part of their mission, but I found the fact of all software being universally compatible as a bit hard to swallow. Thankfully, Lalonde doesn’t bog us down in endless technical detail and keeps things fairly light.
My biggest issue with Origins is the writing. Lalonde himself admits that it’s not his greatest, but that being said; it really left me feeling underwhelmed. The writing comes off as a bit sophomoric; almost like you’re reading a young adult novel. I found parts of the story interesting, but other just felt too conventional. The heroes get into trouble, but it seems that no matter what problem they encounter, they always have the perfect solution for it. I never felt like they were in any real danger. The universe they live in has a veneer of grittiness to it, but dig down a little deeper, and what you have is a setting where everything is near-perfect. Still, I guess I shouldn’t be too harsh on Lalonde since this is a free e-book, and I guess that for something that’s free, it’s a lot better than the usual cheapo science-fiction schlock out there which was written by a total amateur. But, comparing this book to other well-respected science-fiction titles out there, Lalonde has a ways to go. Overall, I’d give Origins an average 3 out of 5. It’s good in terms of something that’s free, but don’t expect classic science-fiction literature here. Take it or leave it. ( )

What can I say from this book? I can start by saying that is a very interesting and mind grabing fiction novel. This novel develops in an environment called: Future Fiction, and this contributes to the story itself by involving all the traits of space and making the plot more interesting while you go deeper in it.

Our main character for this book is called Jonas Valent, he is an engineer and has experience with some naval flight ships (Battle). The plot begins when a group of people hack the military system to "play" against them, by doing this, they get caught and are recruited by the military. They get involved in a battle simulation in which their actions will determine their destiny, either wining and achieving a rank for fighting, or loosing and being send to jail to pay all their crimes. ( )