A review by sblackone
The Caledonian Gambit by Dan Moren

2.0

It's an alright book when just considering light space opera. Even by those standards the sci-fi veneer is a bit thin and this story could easily work in a modern setting. It's a quick read, but nothing outstanding or memorable. It's just enough to keep reading it, but nothing enough to truly get invested in the setting, story or characters. The main character lacks agency and is mostly an observer ordered around or dragged along. The prose is fine for this, but the dialogue can be awkward. It's not truly bad, but there is something a little off with it. At the beginning I didn't mind too much, but at the end it became really annoying. More and more I thought that people wouldn't talk this way.

The story draws a bit too much attention to transplanting pretty stereotypical Irish/Scottish culture onto another planet in the future. Instead of letting that speak for itself, and maybe allow the reader to ignore the weirdness of how little advanced the technology or architecture is, the book constantly mentions how quaint everything is. This can pull you out of the story now and then.