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A review by midrel
Warship by Joshua Dalzelle
2.0
First and foremost, I have to say the book is not bad. Or maybe just not terrible. I mean, I am giving it two stars. Two stars is not terrible... right?
Be that as it may, it does have a lot of flaws: I could not help but feel the writing had a definite sloppiness about it, for example. Like the penchant for repeating words over and over, terms, whole phrases or ideas. A lot of things also felt like padding, in both first and second half of the books, though in the second half stuff was at least happening. Most of the time.
I get that the first half might have been meant mostly to establish characters and do some world-building (The latter of which I enjoyed well enough) but at least as far as characters go, there are none that are terribly interesting. The MC feels like a thinly disguised generic bad-ass with troubled past and drinking problem, and the rest of the cast are not too terribly better. We spend a lot of time revolving around the ship, giving orders and waiting, but not much, if any, of that time is spent exploring those characters and their reaction to such a huge, world-changing event beyond a few shallow lines.
But yeah, despite all the above, the book entertains. Whether that is enough or not is up to you. As for me, I am not actually sure whether I'll read or not the second entry. I might just give it a try to see if the author does get better at it, and learns from the missed opportunities here.
Be that as it may, it does have a lot of flaws: I could not help but feel the writing had a definite sloppiness about it, for example. Like the penchant for repeating words over and over, terms, whole phrases or ideas. A lot of things also felt like padding, in both first and second half of the books, though in the second half stuff was at least happening. Most of the time.
I get that the first half might have been meant mostly to establish characters and do some world-building (The latter of which I enjoyed well enough) but at least as far as characters go, there are none that are terribly interesting. The MC feels like a thinly disguised generic bad-ass with troubled past and drinking problem, and the rest of the cast are not too terribly better. We spend a lot of time revolving around the ship, giving orders and waiting, but not much, if any, of that time is spent exploring those characters and their reaction to such a huge, world-changing event beyond a few shallow lines.
But yeah, despite all the above, the book entertains. Whether that is enough or not is up to you. As for me, I am not actually sure whether I'll read or not the second entry. I might just give it a try to see if the author does get better at it, and learns from the missed opportunities here.