Robert M. Kerns begins It Ain’t Over with a riveting space battle and a survival story that immediately reminded me of the 2013 movie Gravity. I was ready for a tense castaway story on an abandoned mining station. But then the real space opera starts—alien spaceship, strong AI—the space fantasy works. Sigh. ( )

after a very rough start to the story, it turned into a rollicking barnburner. lots of action, interesting actors with complex rationales. while i know the story needs to move "along", this story seemed to move a bit too easily from a simple-ish dilemma needing a solution to more unlikely and complex machinations every few chapters until the end... still, a very enjoyable book, and i look forward to book 2, "'til it's over"

fwiw, this is one of the first books i've read in a while where, when insomnia hit, the book hit the spot for several hours. i feel like crap the next day, but it was still more fun than counting ceiling dust bunnies at 3am :) ( )

Starts well

But it descends to Marty-Stu pretty quickly.

Then there are the puzzling choices. A black box flight recorder...for a warship?!?

Nothing happens unless the MC is present.
Some characters appear only for a moment in scenes and then seem to disappear until needed again.

I got over halfway through before I got tired of nonsense.

DNF ( )

Starts well

But it descends to Marty-Stu pretty quickly.

Then there are the puzzling choices. A black box flight recorder...for a warship?!?

Nothing happens unless the MC is present.
Some characters appear only for a moment in scenes and then seem to disappear until needed again.

I got over halfway through before I got tired of nonsense.

DNF ( )

As an adventure it was pretty good, the characters were a bit more than flat, which is better than I expected. I don't think it is fair to go so far as to say it was formulaic, however it did feel like the author didn't always know what to do with elements he added.
overall I might read more by the author ( )