Scan barcode
A review by thinde
Call to Arms by Jay Allan
4.0
3.5 Stars
The emotional impact of this book is high. There are near impossible challenges and heroes to fight through them. We even get a glimpse into the enemy's mind and find that some of them are admirable. Good stuff.
Now for the not-so-good. The portrayal of leadership is severely flawed. Captain Barron's go-to style is to constantly call his officers and shout at them to do the impossible. When they give him estimates, he insists they deliver in half the time... It's just sad. Any officer that acts that way is simply asking their subordinates to pad their future estimates. It's not a good idea to create a culture where it is acceptable, nay necessary, to lie to the captain.
The engineering descriptions are laughable. Apparently, in this far distant future, distributed power systems are not a thing, even for critical systems. What of batteries, super-conducting capacitors, micro-turbine generators, networked power-hubs with triple redundancy? Oh, and my favorite... let's remove the safeties and turn everything up to 110%. Fear not, there are never any consequences. And while we're flying around with the gravity compensators off, at twelve G's, let forget that this would kill a normal human being. (10Gs for 60 seconds is deadly. Even with pressure suits, 6 gravities rapidly results in unconsciousness.)
And what of the tactics? A moon-sized supply station with a two turrets at the poles. Remove one and then use the line of sight problem... after all you have two ships. But why bother? The station is not mobile. Have these people not heard of kinetic bombardment? Why get into weapons range when you could interdict the cargo vessels at long-range and send in the big rocks?
There're a million other minor irritants for those with real-world experience, but the core of the story is good enough to overcome the negatives.
The emotional impact of this book is high. There are near impossible challenges and heroes to fight through them. We even get a glimpse into the enemy's mind and find that some of them are admirable. Good stuff.
Now for the not-so-good. The portrayal of leadership is severely flawed. Captain Barron's go-to style is to constantly call his officers and shout at them to do the impossible. When they give him estimates, he insists they deliver in half the time... It's just sad. Any officer that acts that way is simply asking their subordinates to pad their future estimates. It's not a good idea to create a culture where it is acceptable, nay necessary, to lie to the captain.
The engineering descriptions are laughable. Apparently, in this far distant future, distributed power systems are not a thing, even for critical systems. What of batteries, super-conducting capacitors, micro-turbine generators, networked power-hubs with triple redundancy? Oh, and my favorite... let's remove the safeties and turn everything up to 110%. Fear not, there are never any consequences. And while we're flying around with the gravity compensators off, at twelve G's, let forget that this would kill a normal human being. (10Gs for 60 seconds is deadly. Even with pressure suits, 6 gravities rapidly results in unconsciousness.)
And what of the tactics? A moon-sized supply station with a two turrets at the poles. Remove one and then use the line of sight problem... after all you have two ships. But why bother? The station is not mobile. Have these people not heard of kinetic bombardment? Why get into weapons range when you could interdict the cargo vessels at long-range and send in the big rocks?
There're a million other minor irritants for those with real-world experience, but the core of the story is good enough to overcome the negatives.