Linda Nagata

Second book in a series starts with a very interesting, albeit highly confusing military trial of our hero Lt Shelley and his team. Following their actions against the industry giant [intent of destroying the mysterious Red even if it means detonating the nuclear weapons on US territory] Shelley's team is charged with working with outside national force to penalize US citizen.

While public opinion is very much leaning towards Shelley's team, mysterious forces, both antagonistic and supportive of our heroes, start to approach and execute their own plans. While Shelley will try to stay out of the obvious conflict between Red and the Dragons (long living, almost immortal corporate leaders) he will find himself sucked into conflicts with various factions, shadow military outfits, paramilitaries bent on controlling the Red and finally outfit that seems to be directly at Red's service.

Author's style is truly beautiful and - as story progresses and our heroes are bounced around the urban areas hit by bomb attacks, rural areas under constant buzz of drones and automated weapons hunting for them to final battle that will leave Shelley at the mercy of of the nature - Nagata manages to give us various entanglements between the members of the team, their fears, their sorrow when teammates are harmed or even killed, constant attempts to finding the meaning for themselves in the new world outside the military that discharged them from service after the trials.

There is not a boring moment in the book, and this includes love scenes and flirts between team-members, that I usually find very boring and nothing but page filler.

Action scenes are wonderfully written, everyone is fair game, everyone can be hurt and even killed (that boarding operation on the cargo ship was breath taking, and action on the Dragon owned Earth orbiting satellite-habitat was so reminiscent of Neuromancer it got me giggling with joy :)) so you are glued to the very last page to see how it will end.

If you like stories like that of TV show Person of Interest - this is the book for you.

Highly recommended to fans of SF, action, and political thrillers. Onto the last book in the series :)… (mehr)

There were things I really liked about this book. The premise of the Red (which I won't go into because spoilers), the bleak idea of defense contractors starting and continuing wars so they can sell weapons, the beginning and the ending.

But the only character with any substance is Shelley, the MC, and he isn't that developed. Everyone else is basically cardboard, especially Shelley's crew of soldiers. Even his girlfriend is pretty flat. And the villain, too, seems very threadbare. So I just didn't connect with any of the people, and I didn't care what happened to them.

In addition, the plot jerks around, not in a thriller-twisty way, but in a kind of wait-what? way. It also dragged in the middle where it wasn't clear what the story was. But despite all that, it was well-written and I was interested enough to finish. Not intending to read the sequels at this time, but you never know.… (mehr)

Interesting stories, some are non-standalone [in my opinion] tie-ins (the fantasy one with the chivalrous smoke demon) that might leave the reader a little bit confused because the story just drops you in the middle of things, some are tie-ins that can stand on their own (e.g. RED related stories) and some are pure standalone adventures (like excellent inter-dimensional fantasy/SF story and the horror story with the survivors of the airplane crash).

Good collection, but again that is to be expected from Linda Nagata.

Highly recommended.… (mehr)