Brett Patton

I enjoyed this book more then the first. Matt's character is challenged and expanded, and faces real conflict. He's forced to confront the truth about the main belief that drives him. Not that this made the story suddenly deep and full of moral questions. It's still your basic action story - lots of grabbling mecha, explosions and dire situations only the hero can resolve. And that is why I like it. Enjoyable, fun, fast paced - and there were even a few surprises. I recommend this book to people who enjoy action style sci-fi.… (más)

I'm not sure why I picked up this book in Barnes and Noble. Probably because I've been playing too much Battletech. Anyhoo, the first bit is a little boring, and I probably would have stopped reading if it first portion didn't take place in Florida, Cape Canaveral, where I grew up. But as I keep reading, the story got better - so much so that I was eager to finish the book, to see what happened. The world building was clever and enjoyable, a little heavy on the revenge angst, but overall - a fine novel. I very much enjoyed the Mecha, thhe idea and design behind these machines. Being a Demonrider sounds awesome! In the end, I liked it enough I purchased the second and would recommend to anyone looking for a fun sci-fi read.… (más)

Surprisingly slightly better than the previous book in the series.

Matt is now a secret Hero of the Union and gets to go on lots of undercover missions with his massive Demon class biomechanical robot hybrid soldier toy. One of these includes eliminating a cology of HuMax, Union's arch enemy of genemodded super 'humans'. Matt realises they are in fact "just people" living simple lives on their own, and rebels, joining the Union's other foe, the Cluster. Which he soon realises are also "just people". And so begins his next quest in life - to convert the Union into seeing everyone as people rather than enemies.

If it sounds somewhat simplisitic and beat-you-over-your-head moralisitic that's because it is. But it is, in places, also quite good fun. there isn't enough banter between the characters, or indeed much dialogue at all, adn whatt ehre is comes across stilted, but there's plenty of action. The plot is predictable with the outcome that you'd expect, but how we get there is mostly entertaining. The capabilitie sof the various robot types continue to be forgettable, but we've lost the vast scale problems - apart from one very bad example at the end: where does Matt's body go when he "shards" his demon?

With a bit more characterisation both for Matt and for all the people around him, this could be a good book, but as it stands it is light entertainment at best.… (más)