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A review by natalie_bee
Against All Odds by Jeffery H. Haskell
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This book has such high ratings and I wanted desperately to love it. I love a series set in space! If I could give it more like 3.5-3.75 stars, I would.
Pros: space! Underdogs doing heroic things. Galaxy travel.
Cons: it began to become VERY pro America Christian propaganda feeling. I understand that in novels dealing with battles and war, there are “good” guys and “bad” guys. This is a novel about space. It talks of people from varying planets and systems. Why were both of the bad guys in this book of middle eastern descent and Russians? The stereotypical American boogeymen. Come on. They weren’t even well written fully formed characters. The Caliphate spies and soldiers reference Allah and the more extremist sides of Islam. The Russians quite literally spoke of vodka and repeatedly said “da” as of to prove they’re Russian. Really? You couldn’t come up with just warring political factions? You had to write comically bad caricatures of real cultures? Then of course the hero is a Christian male. Who else to defeat the foreign bad guys?
The first half of the book was honestly great. I liked it a lot. Then it progressively got bad. It felt like the characters were rushed so half of them that you were intended to care about, were nobodies that didn’t matter if they died. The whole end battle was just a clusterfuck of sci-fi jargon, rather than a well written battle. A bunch of people you’re introduced to die, and it’s just like “eh, well, space, what can ya do?”.
I had really high hopes for this and got let down.
Pros: space! Underdogs doing heroic things. Galaxy travel.
Cons: it began to become VERY pro America Christian propaganda feeling. I understand that in novels dealing with battles and war, there are “good” guys and “bad” guys. This is a novel about space. It talks of people from varying planets and systems. Why were both of the bad guys in this book of middle eastern descent and Russians? The stereotypical American boogeymen. Come on. They weren’t even well written fully formed characters. The Caliphate spies and soldiers reference Allah and the more extremist sides of Islam. The Russians quite literally spoke of vodka and repeatedly said “da” as of to prove they’re Russian. Really? You couldn’t come up with just warring political factions? You had to write comically bad caricatures of real cultures? Then of course the hero is a Christian male. Who else to defeat the foreign bad guys?
The first half of the book was honestly great. I liked it a lot. Then it progressively got bad. It felt like the characters were rushed so half of them that you were intended to care about, were nobodies that didn’t matter if they died. The whole end battle was just a clusterfuck of sci-fi jargon, rather than a well written battle. A bunch of people you’re introduced to die, and it’s just like “eh, well, space, what can ya do?”.
I had really high hopes for this and got let down.