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Bloodstar (2012)

by Ian Douglas(Favorite Author)

3.77 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0062197991 (ISBN13: 9780062197993)

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

publisher

Harper Voyager

series

Star Corpsman

review 1: The story itself was more or less interesting, but there are a lot of hard-stops to plot to put in either a landslide of medical terminology, or for the characters to wax philosophically about things, though mostly religion. Given that the titular Bloodworld is home to an, shall we say, orthodox theocratic government, you can probably guess how much of the 'discussion' on religion goes. Be ye warned if that isn't your cup of tea.The medical and philosophical inserts really do muck up the pacing of the story quite a bit. I was willing to forgive the medical portions, as the main character IS a corpsman. The philosophical parts were are a harder sale for me, and just seems like they were there to try to imitate 'Starship Troopers', to poor effect.All told, I can't say I ... morerecommend this book.
review 2: I have very, very mixed feelings about this book. As a fan of military science fiction, I have found that there is a dearth of what I call "Platoon" style military SF, which follows the exploits of individual enlisted people on the front lines (as opposed to "Patton" style military SF, which shows officers away from the battlefield having brilliant strategic thoughts while others do the dying for them (with apologies to Honor Harrington). I probably should mention up front that I am an ex enlisted serviceman.And, as someone who loves "Platoon" style military SF, I found the characters compelling, the action believable and interesting, and some very exciting sequences. Much of the book was excellent.However, there's a lot of what I consider classically poor SF writing--pages upon pages of exposition that doesn't advance the plot and just lags. Purists might say that this is what hard SF is, but I can name a dozen hard SF writers who give great exposition without slowing the plot down and boring their readers. Half this book was brilliantly written and exceptionally exciting. A quarter of it was very well done. Fifteen percent was good. Ten percent was quite dull.Overall, I will probably read more of the series as it comes out. I want to like it better than I actually did. less

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