Take a photo of a barcode or cover
charles__ 's review for:
Aftershocks
by Marko Kloos
Beginning of a many books’ crossover military science fiction (MIL-SF)/conspiracy thriller/ space opera modeled on The Expanse.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I can't help but to compare and contrast this story to The Expanse. That’s obviously what the author was imitating here. However, the book falls short of the higher literary standards set by that series towards its end and does not set itself well enough apart from it story-wise. In addition, the book doesn’t end with a cliff hanger--it ends with a cliff. Its as if the author had a contractual word count; reached it and stopped with a: To Be Continued.
My ebook version was a moderate 288-pages. I received it free with my Amazon Prime subscription. The author's publisher (Amazon) put a lot of eyeballs on the book with this piece of marketing. It had a US 2019 copyright. Reading was brisk, although at the end I was paging through.
Marko Kloos is an American MIL-SF and fantasy fiction author. He has written about ten novels. The last book I read by him was Terms of Enlistment (2013) (my review), the first in his Frontlines series.
Writing was good. Kloos is a journeyman writer. Action sequences were well choreographed. Dialog and descriptive prose averaged-out to workmanlike. Dialog was better than the descriptive prose, which was clunky and contained some odd word choices. For example, there was needless repetition in the narrative. The words drive plume were exclusively used to describe rocket exhaust maybe 20-times. (Also, you don’t get a rocket (properly) exhaust plume in vacuum.) The tone of the writing was also uneven. Masculine dialog and narrative were better wrought than feminine. The author needs to work on his female characters. The male characters were alright. Men that look like women, like Idena were likewise alright. Girly-girls not so much.
There was no sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll music in the story. Violence was on-par with similar books in the sub-genre. Sex and the possibility of sex appears in the narrative, but nobody has any. I frankly thought this was prudishly unrealistic considering the military and immediate post-war plot and character opportunities. Alcohol and drug usage appear in the narration. Its social use only. Self-medication plays no part in the plot. Again, I think this was not realistic considering the military, particularly de-mobilized military and post-war plot. PTSD must be rampant through the population? There are no music references. Violence was: physical, edged-weapons, firearms, and heavy weapons. Its moderately graphic. Body count was modest for the genre. This book could have been written for a YA audience.
There was an ensemble cast of characters. (I don’t particularly like ensemble character usage.) The main POVs were: Aden, Idina, Dunstan, and Solveig. Aden was first amongst equals of the characters. He’s a Getian. That’s the Teutonic Planet. They lost the war. He’s eerily similar to Grayson, the protagonist in Kloos’ Terms of Enlistment. He’s an (Ex-)Officer and a Gentleman. Having served with the losing side of the story's equivalent of the Waffen-SS he's an ex-war criminal. (He committed no atrocities.) He’s setting-out to make his way in the solar system because he can’t go home to his rich family after being de-mobilized. (There’s an undeveloped Archnemesis Dad plot.) Aden was the strongest character. He contributed much of the narrative. He could have carried the book by himself. Idina was the hardened, serving, non-commissioned (non-com) veteran for the winning side of the war. She’s a Palladian. That’s the South Asian planet. They were amongst the allies who won the war. She looks too much like Gunnery Sergeant Bobbie Draper from The Expanse to need any more explanation. Dunstan was a serving (Space Navy) Officer and a Gentleman, but for the winning side. He’s a Rhodian. That’s the North American planet. (It could be American, but it might be Canadian?) He’s The Captain. Idina and Dunsten contribute moderately to the narrative. Finally, there’s Solveig. She’s Aden’s sister and the youngest (20 something) character. (She’s Getian.) She’s also an Ojou and Smart Girl . She’s heir to the family mega-corp in the absence of her brother. Its yet to be seen if she’s Kloos’ Mary Sue .
There are numerous subordinate characters. They mainly come from the militaries of war’s combatants, police, merchant spacers, mega-corporate apparatchiks and the demimonde. These characters were well enough done. However, I thought Kloos invested too many words in characters he eventually discarded.
The antagonist was an undeveloped Nebulous Government Conspiracy. (You’ll have to buy more books to find out.)
Plot was barely an introduction to the main characters, and then the book ended. If a story classically has three (3) (or five (5)) acts, only Idina’s and Dunstan’s narratives might count as having been taken full turn. Note these are the MIL-SF story lines-- Kloos' bread 'n butter. Aden’s main plot line and its subordinate Solveig’s plot line ended abruptly with To Be Continued. This left me with the feeling that the story of this book in the series was very unfinished.
However to summarize: a great war between two (2) coalitions in a six (6) planet solar system has been over for 5-years. Folks have begun putting themselves and things back together. The victors are squabbling amongst themselves and the vanquished are sullen. Think the end of WWII in the European theater. However, Getia feels more like Weimar Germany with an Iraq/Afghanistan occupation. Aden and Solvieg are like defeated German Krupp heirs. Only, Aden can’t go home, because of his problems with his father. He’s also a freed war criminal. Actually, both he and father are freed war criminals. He needs to make a new life for himself. Whether she’s ready or not, young, beautiful, brilliant Solvieg has to take over the family business. (The father being a war criminal, can’t run a mega-corp.) Idina was a career ground pounder with something like the American/NATO Iraq/Afghanistan occupation forces. She still has issues with the losers. Dunstan survives the post-war Reduction in Force as the skipper of a small warship and tries to settle into a peacetime regime. Weird stuff happens. Idina enters a counter-terrorism (think Iraq/Afghanistan) conflict situation. Dunstan enters a space piracy conflict situation. The reader sees both conflict situations are related to a Nebulous Conspiracy. Aden has some formative experiences while in the process of being repatriated. He gets a shady-looking job traveling around the solar system. (It’s likely involved with the Nebulous Conspiracy.) The young Sovieg gets a high-profile job at the mega-corp as heir-apparent. (The Mega-corp was likely involved with the Nebulous Conspiracy.) Story ends.
World building was ‘mixed’. In places it was very good. In others, you could tell the author was pulling it out of his butt and had not devoted enough thought to it.
The author specializes in MIL-SF. Idina’s and Dunstan’s worlds had credible atmosphere. He has always done well to capture the Army kulture. With regard to space navy, the practices and procedures were also well enough done. This is one of the few space battle stories I've read that knew a spaceship can be fought better by a machine (AI) than a man. (The author knows [a:John Scalzi|4763|John Scalzi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1562613145p2/4763.jpg].) However, I think the military life he writes about was overly-sanitized. For example, there is historically a lot of substance abuse, profiteering and sexploitation in garrison duty right after a bitter conflict. Serving veterans after a long war get hinky in peacetime. In addition, post-war recruits are typically not amongst the best and brightest. All of Kloos' soldiers and sailors are too much noble warriors and not human beings recovering from stress and confronted with great change.
The author's grasp of space science was shaky. There is a vocabulary to space science. He doesn’t use it and likely doesn’t completely understand it. This even takes into account the Palladium Universe’s use of Artificial Gravity. For example, Palladium universe spaceships use hyperefficient nuclear-electric rockets. I can't recall any narrative about spaceships fueling or carrying fuel. What do these 'rockets' use for propellant to create all those drive plumes? Speed/Time/Distance also seems a bit off-the-cuff for interplanetary transits. I did a back-of-the-envelope spreadsheet calculation of Aden’s ‘about’ one-week spaceship ride from Rhodia to Acheron at 1g on the Cloud Dancer. A spaceship can travel more than a Billion km ±20% in 7-days at 1g with decel (which the author included), although you don’t instantaneously go from ‘stop’ to 9.8 m/s2. We also don’t know the relative positions of the planets in their orbits. A Billion km ±20% is about the distance from Earth to Saturn at their closest points in orbit. I would like to see a ‘map’ of the six planets in the Gaia system. Keeping the time/distance relationships between planetary travel straight could get hairy as the characters bounce around the Gaian system?
The computer and comms tech was credible. This even takes into account the Palladium Universe’s use of theSubspace Ansible for IntarWeb connectivity between planets. Frankly, I thought that in the year 3300-ish CE there would have been a greater degree of technological progress. You would think, that if you’ve got anti-gravity tech—you’d find a way to build it into toothbrushes? I also thought I’d see mention of 3D-printer manufacturing. I note that The Expanse went almost the entire series without it.
In general, I thought the story's future was not terribly imaginative or well thought-out. For example, the cause of the war as explained by Solieg and Aden’s father seemed farfetched. Graphene is manufactured by an industrial process from a common element (Carbon). Invading a planet for their Graphene was like invading them for their rocks. Where does the fuel and the infrastructure providing it for interplanetary travel come from? In a war, fuel, its consumption and provisioning is a key part of the logistics effort. Why were so many marginally habitable planets in the Gaia system inhabited by different ethnic groups? Why were there so many segregated ethnic groups? It’s likely prohibitively expensive to maintain large populations in artificial environments, especially when there’s allegedly plenty of Lebensraum on planets with ‘free’ air, mostly 1g, and moderate temperatures. With well-established, inexpensive instantaneous communications, why were folks speaking so many different languages that linguists like Aden were needed?
The author wants to write the new The Expanse. He didn’t have the ability or the resources to do that. The story was a good MIL-SF read combat-wise. This story was good because it written by someone who was familiar with the military, and gets the parts about being a soldier or sailor right. However, it lacks the prose, depth, and originality to be a really good, epic, space opera. The craftsmanship of the writing was generally good, but there were noticeable and easily correctable errors. A higher caliber of editors and better proofreading could have greatly improved the story. Harder to improve was the structure of the book. The ensemble cast of characters was a serious error. [b:Leviathan Wakes|8855321|Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)|James S.A. Corey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1411013134l/8855321._SY75_.jpg|13730452] (2011) the first book in the The Expanse, had a single POV ( Holden’s). As the [a:James S.A. Corey|4192148|James S.A. Corey|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] writing team matured, they eventually went to the harder to write ensemble format. They also later received important publisher and fan production support with world building and editing. Kloos had a good character with Aden, the ability and enough pages to write the first part of Aden’s Story in the Palladium Wars. He overreached. He tried to write four (4) stories at once, and only did two (2) of them OK (not Aden’s though). In addition, the story was not showing a lot of deep thinking with the world building. As the series develops this lack of forethought may have adverse consequences.
I'll likely read the next in the series, [b:Ballistic|45458991|Ballistic (The Palladium Wars #2)|Marko Kloos|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557064183l/45458991._SX50_.jpg|70232622], hoping it gets better, although, it’s not going to be high on my list.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I can't help but to compare and contrast this story to The Expanse. That’s obviously what the author was imitating here. However, the book falls short of the higher literary standards set by that series towards its end and does not set itself well enough apart from it story-wise. In addition, the book doesn’t end with a cliff hanger--it ends with a cliff. Its as if the author had a contractual word count; reached it and stopped with a: To Be Continued.
My ebook version was a moderate 288-pages. I received it free with my Amazon Prime subscription. The author's publisher (Amazon) put a lot of eyeballs on the book with this piece of marketing. It had a US 2019 copyright. Reading was brisk, although at the end I was paging through.
Marko Kloos is an American MIL-SF and fantasy fiction author. He has written about ten novels. The last book I read by him was Terms of Enlistment (2013) (my review), the first in his Frontlines series.
Writing was good. Kloos is a journeyman writer. Action sequences were well choreographed. Dialog and descriptive prose averaged-out to workmanlike. Dialog was better than the descriptive prose, which was clunky and contained some odd word choices. For example, there was needless repetition in the narrative. The words drive plume were exclusively used to describe rocket exhaust maybe 20-times. (Also, you don’t get a rocket (properly) exhaust plume in vacuum.) The tone of the writing was also uneven. Masculine dialog and narrative were better wrought than feminine. The author needs to work on his female characters. The male characters were alright. Men that look like women, like Idena were likewise alright. Girly-girls not so much.
There was no sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll music in the story. Violence was on-par with similar books in the sub-genre. Sex and the possibility of sex appears in the narrative, but nobody has any. I frankly thought this was prudishly unrealistic considering the military and immediate post-war plot and character opportunities. Alcohol and drug usage appear in the narration. Its social use only. Self-medication plays no part in the plot. Again, I think this was not realistic considering the military, particularly de-mobilized military and post-war plot. PTSD must be rampant through the population? There are no music references. Violence was: physical, edged-weapons, firearms, and heavy weapons. Its moderately graphic. Body count was modest for the genre. This book could have been written for a YA audience.
There was an ensemble cast of characters. (I don’t particularly like ensemble character usage.) The main POVs were: Aden, Idina, Dunstan, and Solveig. Aden was first amongst equals of the characters. He’s a Getian. That’s the Teutonic Planet. They lost the war. He’s eerily similar to Grayson, the protagonist in Kloos’ Terms of Enlistment. He’s an (Ex-)Officer and a Gentleman. Having served with the losing side of the story's equivalent of the Waffen-SS he's an ex-war criminal. (He committed no atrocities.) He’s setting-out to make his way in the solar system because he can’t go home to his rich family after being de-mobilized. (There’s an undeveloped Archnemesis Dad plot.) Aden was the strongest character. He contributed much of the narrative. He could have carried the book by himself. Idina was the hardened, serving, non-commissioned (non-com) veteran for the winning side of the war. She’s a Palladian. That’s the South Asian planet. They were amongst the allies who won the war. She looks too much like Gunnery Sergeant Bobbie Draper from The Expanse to need any more explanation. Dunstan was a serving (Space Navy) Officer and a Gentleman, but for the winning side. He’s a Rhodian. That’s the North American planet. (It could be American, but it might be Canadian?) He’s The Captain. Idina and Dunsten contribute moderately to the narrative. Finally, there’s Solveig. She’s Aden’s sister and the youngest (20 something) character. (She’s Getian.) She’s also an Ojou and Smart Girl . She’s heir to the family mega-corp in the absence of her brother. Its yet to be seen if she’s Kloos’ Mary Sue .
There are numerous subordinate characters. They mainly come from the militaries of war’s combatants, police, merchant spacers, mega-corporate apparatchiks and the demimonde. These characters were well enough done. However, I thought Kloos invested too many words in characters he eventually discarded.
The antagonist was an undeveloped Nebulous Government Conspiracy. (You’ll have to buy more books to find out.)
Plot was barely an introduction to the main characters, and then the book ended. If a story classically has three (3) (or five (5)) acts, only Idina’s and Dunstan’s narratives might count as having been taken full turn. Note these are the MIL-SF story lines-- Kloos' bread 'n butter. Aden’s main plot line and its subordinate Solveig’s plot line ended abruptly with To Be Continued. This left me with the feeling that the story of this book in the series was very unfinished.
However to summarize: a great war between two (2) coalitions in a six (6) planet solar system has been over for 5-years. Folks have begun putting themselves and things back together. The victors are squabbling amongst themselves and the vanquished are sullen. Think the end of WWII in the European theater. However, Getia feels more like Weimar Germany with an Iraq/Afghanistan occupation. Aden and Solvieg are like defeated German Krupp heirs. Only, Aden can’t go home, because of his problems with his father. He’s also a freed war criminal. Actually, both he and father are freed war criminals. He needs to make a new life for himself. Whether she’s ready or not, young, beautiful, brilliant Solvieg has to take over the family business. (The father being a war criminal, can’t run a mega-corp.) Idina was a career ground pounder with something like the American/NATO Iraq/Afghanistan occupation forces. She still has issues with the losers. Dunstan survives the post-war Reduction in Force as the skipper of a small warship and tries to settle into a peacetime regime. Weird stuff happens. Idina enters a counter-terrorism (think Iraq/Afghanistan) conflict situation. Dunstan enters a space piracy conflict situation. The reader sees both conflict situations are related to a Nebulous Conspiracy. Aden has some formative experiences while in the process of being repatriated. He gets a shady-looking job traveling around the solar system. (It’s likely involved with the Nebulous Conspiracy.) The young Sovieg gets a high-profile job at the mega-corp as heir-apparent. (The Mega-corp was likely involved with the Nebulous Conspiracy.) Story ends.
World building was ‘mixed’. In places it was very good. In others, you could tell the author was pulling it out of his butt and had not devoted enough thought to it.
The author specializes in MIL-SF. Idina’s and Dunstan’s worlds had credible atmosphere. He has always done well to capture the Army kulture. With regard to space navy, the practices and procedures were also well enough done. This is one of the few space battle stories I've read that knew a spaceship can be fought better by a machine (AI) than a man. (The author knows [a:John Scalzi|4763|John Scalzi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1562613145p2/4763.jpg].) However, I think the military life he writes about was overly-sanitized. For example, there is historically a lot of substance abuse, profiteering and sexploitation in garrison duty right after a bitter conflict. Serving veterans after a long war get hinky in peacetime. In addition, post-war recruits are typically not amongst the best and brightest. All of Kloos' soldiers and sailors are too much noble warriors and not human beings recovering from stress and confronted with great change.
The author's grasp of space science was shaky. There is a vocabulary to space science. He doesn’t use it and likely doesn’t completely understand it. This even takes into account the Palladium Universe’s use of Artificial Gravity. For example, Palladium universe spaceships use hyperefficient nuclear-electric rockets. I can't recall any narrative about spaceships fueling or carrying fuel. What do these 'rockets' use for propellant to create all those drive plumes? Speed/Time/Distance also seems a bit off-the-cuff for interplanetary transits. I did a back-of-the-envelope spreadsheet calculation of Aden’s ‘about’ one-week spaceship ride from Rhodia to Acheron at 1g on the Cloud Dancer. A spaceship can travel more than a Billion km ±20% in 7-days at 1g with decel (which the author included), although you don’t instantaneously go from ‘stop’ to 9.8 m/s2. We also don’t know the relative positions of the planets in their orbits. A Billion km ±20% is about the distance from Earth to Saturn at their closest points in orbit. I would like to see a ‘map’ of the six planets in the Gaia system. Keeping the time/distance relationships between planetary travel straight could get hairy as the characters bounce around the Gaian system?
The computer and comms tech was credible. This even takes into account the Palladium Universe’s use of theSubspace Ansible for IntarWeb connectivity between planets. Frankly, I thought that in the year 3300-ish CE there would have been a greater degree of technological progress. You would think, that if you’ve got anti-gravity tech—you’d find a way to build it into toothbrushes? I also thought I’d see mention of 3D-printer manufacturing. I note that The Expanse went almost the entire series without it.
In general, I thought the story's future was not terribly imaginative or well thought-out. For example, the cause of the war as explained by Solieg and Aden’s father seemed farfetched. Graphene is manufactured by an industrial process from a common element (Carbon). Invading a planet for their Graphene was like invading them for their rocks. Where does the fuel and the infrastructure providing it for interplanetary travel come from? In a war, fuel, its consumption and provisioning is a key part of the logistics effort. Why were so many marginally habitable planets in the Gaia system inhabited by different ethnic groups? Why were there so many segregated ethnic groups? It’s likely prohibitively expensive to maintain large populations in artificial environments, especially when there’s allegedly plenty of Lebensraum on planets with ‘free’ air, mostly 1g, and moderate temperatures. With well-established, inexpensive instantaneous communications, why were folks speaking so many different languages that linguists like Aden were needed?
The author wants to write the new The Expanse. He didn’t have the ability or the resources to do that. The story was a good MIL-SF read combat-wise. This story was good because it written by someone who was familiar with the military, and gets the parts about being a soldier or sailor right. However, it lacks the prose, depth, and originality to be a really good, epic, space opera. The craftsmanship of the writing was generally good, but there were noticeable and easily correctable errors. A higher caliber of editors and better proofreading could have greatly improved the story. Harder to improve was the structure of the book. The ensemble cast of characters was a serious error. [b:Leviathan Wakes|8855321|Leviathan Wakes (The Expanse, #1)|James S.A. Corey|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1411013134l/8855321._SY75_.jpg|13730452] (2011) the first book in the The Expanse, had a single POV ( Holden’s). As the [a:James S.A. Corey|4192148|James S.A. Corey|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/m_50x66-82093808bca726cb3249a493fbd3bd0f.png] writing team matured, they eventually went to the harder to write ensemble format. They also later received important publisher and fan production support with world building and editing. Kloos had a good character with Aden, the ability and enough pages to write the first part of Aden’s Story in the Palladium Wars. He overreached. He tried to write four (4) stories at once, and only did two (2) of them OK (not Aden’s though). In addition, the story was not showing a lot of deep thinking with the world building. As the series develops this lack of forethought may have adverse consequences.
I'll likely read the next in the series, [b:Ballistic|45458991|Ballistic (The Palladium Wars #2)|Marko Kloos|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1557064183l/45458991._SX50_.jpg|70232622], hoping it gets better, although, it’s not going to be high on my list.