Scan barcode
A review by hank
Columbus Day by Craig Alanson
2.0
With apologies to my friend odedo1 who I think liked it, this book was bad. This is one of those that I classify as whatever the male version of chick-lit is and I almost always hate those books. For one, it is mostly dialog which is mediocre at best, the kind of good-ole boy dialog that I imagine only men liking. Not sexist really or overly violent but the kind of military, inside joke, living on a farm, going hunting type of boring (IMO) dialog.
The writing is YA and the subject matter is adult, Alanson threw a Deus-ex Machina into the middle of the book which was quite strange and then spent the rest of the book trying to walk back the all powerfulness of this particular character. That character is also the only one who does even a minor bit of development.
For the kicker, the last 1/4 of the book is Alanson trying to shove in moral judgments on a variety of topics that seem dear to him. I agreed with many of his proclamations it just didn't add anything to the story.
For someone who is looking for military fiction I would highly recomment Marko Kloos' series and Old Man's War. Both of those are better character driven stories along with believable military space warfare AND some good dialog. I would give Columbus Day a miss even if it is on sale which is how I grabbed it. I read this going to and from a Euro vacations with lots of time on a plane.
The writing is YA and the subject matter is adult, Alanson threw a Deus-ex Machina into the middle of the book which was quite strange and then spent the rest of the book trying to walk back the all powerfulness of this particular character. That character is also the only one who does even a minor bit of development.
For the kicker, the last 1/4 of the book is Alanson trying to shove in moral judgments on a variety of topics that seem dear to him. I agreed with many of his proclamations it just didn't add anything to the story.
For someone who is looking for military fiction I would highly recomment Marko Kloos' series and Old Man's War. Both of those are better character driven stories along with believable military space warfare AND some good dialog. I would give Columbus Day a miss even if it is on sale which is how I grabbed it. I read this going to and from a Euro vacations with lots of time on a plane.