Mike Smith (14)

Smith is young and it shows in his writing. Though he has a tremendous amount of favorable reviews on Amazon, this book doesn't deserve such unless the reviews happen to be even younger than the author. When I was a teenage boy this would appeal to me, but as an older more seasoned author there are too many loopholes that you can drive a starship in this story to make it seem as good as the followers have proclaimed.

One of the failings of the author is switching points of view in the middle of a scene. We know how the hottie princess is thinking about the the stoic rugged super hero just a second after the super hero has a sexual thought about her.

And that we see the sex fantasies of longing and dating as if the two were in high school play out. Not a mature relation of dating and love.

Further the cliche of situations abound. He is the most accomplished man since a dos equus commercial. And she is the most beautiful and richest woman in the galaxy. The enemy in the most dastardly and easily disappears only to reemerge without logical thought in wanting to continue a vendetta against the superhero and all his followers, knowing that the superhero kills so well, are easily led to the slaughter.

Superhero Radec has no faults. He is the best skilled in hand to hand, he is the best pilot, and he is the confident of the emperor. The absurdity of this is there has been no human being in history that has ever had all these traits, and a character without a flaw just is not exciting.

Then the situational information we learn keeps changing as we go forward. Our hero is the commander of the Praetorian Guards of an Emperor. Responsible for the safety of the Emperor and within the first few pages we learn the guards on the Emperors door don't know who he is? The guys who report to the guys who report to Superhero would know who their boss is, as well as the boss knowing who the guys with the guns protecting his primary would be.

More foolishness like that permeates the entire the story. The Princess and he are on the run and foreshadowing about a sister saying Superhero Radec will marry a princess gives away the entire romance subplot. Or being on the run, they have access to all her money? If on the run anytime the princess appear as herself would trigger a trail right to her. The coup only extended to one fleet, filled with civilians travelling with it, and yet all in the Navy were involved in it and no one let the cat out of the bag? The coup plotters don't line up the politicians for what happens after they are successful? Too many holes.

This is a trilogy and I think Smith offered this as free to get others to pay for the rest. Sorry Mike, I read all of this and as I pointed out, you have too many holes that an editing team, a writers group, some professionalism by getting feedback would help. The trouble with self-publishing, and all authors including myself who do self-publish, need others eyes, critical eyes, to have a glance at our work before release. This work shows that if anyone had taken a look, there was no one there giving advice, or the advice being taken, to elevate this book beyond a children's fantasy.… (más)