Starship Eternal (War Eternal Book 1) by M. R. Forbes. Quirky Algorithms. 433 pages.
I’m a member of Amazon Prime (which I recommend), and one of the benefits is that once a month I get a free ebook to read on my Kindle. Pretty cool. Of course, you have to choose from their list, but if you dig around you can usually find a good one in there somewhere. My success has been hit and miss.
This one fell somewhere in between. The story started off pretty good, and showed some real potential, but started getting mired down with a complicated plot about halfway through. In order to keep from sharing spoilers, I’ll just share the promo copy that’s listed on its Amazon page:
Captain Mitchell “Ares” Williams is a Space Marine and the hero of the Battle for Liberty, whose Shot Heard ‘Round the Universe saved the planet from a nearly unstoppable war machine. He’s handsome, charismatic, and the perfect poster boy to help the military drive enlistment. Pulled from the war and thrown into the spotlight, he’s as efficient at charming the media and bedding beautiful celebrities as he was at shooting down enemy starfighters.
After an assassination attempt leaves Mitchell critically wounded, he begins to suffer from strange hallucinations that carry a chilling and oddly familiar warning:
They are coming. Find the Goliath or humankind will be destroyed.
Convinced that the visions are a side-effect of his injuries, he tries to ignore them, only to learn that he may not be as crazy as he thinks. The enemy is real and closer than he imagined, and they’ll do whatever it takes to prevent him from rediscovering the centuries lost starship.
Narrowly escaping capture, out of time and out of air, Mitchell lands at the mercy of the Riggers – a ragtag crew of former commandos who patrol the lawless outer reaches of the galaxy. Guided by a captain with a reputation for cold-blooded murder, they’re dangerous, immoral, and possibly insane.
They may also be humanity’s last hope for survival in a war that has raged beyond eternity.
On the plus side, this is a good action-oriented story with everything that one would expect from that genre. I found it a quick read and for the most part enjoyed the time I spent reading the book.
On the negative side, there wasn’t enough character development for my liking. Mitchell Williams is a good looking guy that has beautiful women throwing themselves at him left and right (which might be fun but is pretty unbelievable) and has multiple women that he either falls in love with, or who falls in love with him. That’s about the extent of the character development.
But that is often seen is this genre, and I can live with that. What I had a harder time with was the storyline that got more and more complex as the book went on. First we are talking about a war between two factions of humans. Then we are talking about aliens, far more advanced than the humans attacking. Then we bring in the element of time travel, as well as a form of predestination…I found myself lost as I got to the last hundred pages.
The next book in the series was available on Amazon Prime as well, and I could access it as soon as July 1 (this Friday), but I don’t think I will be looking it up.
I give it three stars out of five.
The Great Adventure 