Barely functional

$4.99 for 29 pages?!? It's not even a short story, it's two scenes. Scenes that are only explicable if you have read the preceding novel.

It just ends. There's no surprise or momentous event. Nothing really happens except an admiral getting informed of the new normal.

And there are still proof reading errors!!! $5 for 29pages, you can damn well make them perfect!!

The author should either be ashamed or angry.

***edit***

The rest of the book came through, finally. Disregard the price and size complaint.

Now about the book...still not good. The new admiral was a faint shadow of Kris. Never acted like a professional naval officer. Got kidnapped. Basically fumbled around in a muddle. There was a definite lack of plot direction. Weak antagonists. Few well defined characters and no development. Needs content editing.

Which brings us to the proof reading. Terrible. Names being changed at random. Chapter 19 was so confusing I had to read it twice to figure out who was where, and realize the book was wrong. Words being used incorrectly. Spellcheck is not your friend.

I still cannot recommend this novel. It should not have been released. While going indie is a good choice, the loss of editorial oversight is devastating to this book. It does not reach the level of professional writing the series had previously displayed. ( )

Barely functional

$4.99 for 29 pages?!? It's not even a short story, it's two scenes. Scenes that are only explicable if you have read the preceding novel.

It just ends. There's no surprise or momentous event. Nothing really happens except an admiral getting informed of the new normal.

And there are still proof reading errors!!! $5 for 29pages, you can damn well make them perfect!!

The author should either be ashamed or angry.

***edit***

The rest of the book came through, finally. Disregard the price and size complaint.

Now about the book...still not good. The new admiral was a faint shadow of Kris. Never acted like a professional naval officer. Got kidnapped. Basically fumbled around in a muddle. There was a definite lack of plot direction. Weak antagonists. Few well defined characters and no development. Needs content editing.

Which brings us to the proof reading. Terrible. Names being changed at random. Chapter 19 was so confusing I had to read it twice to figure out who was where, and realize the book was wrong. Words being used incorrectly. Spellcheck is not your friend.

I still cannot recommend this novel. It should not have been released. While going indie is a good choice, the loss of editorial oversight is devastating to this book. It does not reach the level of professional writing the series had previously displayed. ( )

A short novel (not the little bits he's mostly been putting out, but a full story) of Admiral Sandy Santiago after she takes over from Kris out at Alwa. It's mildly interesting; Sandy is a character I've wanted to know more about, though she's a little obsessed with "those damn Longknifes". For good reason, but still. And even so she lets Granny Rita bushwhack her - her side of what we also see in Kris Longknife's Maid Goes on Strike. Unfortunately, going indie hasn't helped Shepherd's editing any - at one point, in a conference with her officers, "But, Admiral -" Sandy said....um, Sandy's the only admiral around. And ships are still "breaking" into orbit, and so on. Oh, and missing quote marks, usually at the end of a paragraph. The story is pretty good, the editing is annoying (though going indie doesn't seem to have _hurt_ his editing any, his traditionally published books had the same kind of screwups). Sandy goes to visit the cats (and gets kidnapped - not sure what was going on there), fights aliens, fights more aliens, goes home and gets sideswiped by Granny Rita, things kind of dribble off...and she ends up muttering about filling Kris Longknife's godlike shoes. Glad I read it, I guess, no reason for me to ever reread. But I do want to read the next one. ( )