Review: Jewel of the Stars by Adam David Collings
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A decent story, but not well thought through. Enjoyable, even if mostly popcorn level.
As an interstellar cruise liner gets underway, Earth's combined fleets come under assault from an unknown enemy. As Earth falls, they may be the only free humans left in the universe.
It's novella length, not novel, and obviously intended to be serialized but does have a story arc with a decent resolution within it.
Taken on it's own, a reasonable little story. Decent characters, even if they are way too dramatic for purposes of chewing scenery.
There are lots of unanswered questions and things that don't make sense - like how did the aliens get such sterling intelligence without Earth intelligence or military realizing what was going on (especially if even civilian grade sensors are as good as depicted)? If you don't know where they're from, how can you run away (as opposed to blundering into the middle of them)? Did Earth's military put up any kind of resistance at all, or were they simply overwhelmed and slaughtered (and if the latter, why is one of their jerry-rigged guns worth anything?) Why in the heck does Earth not have planetary defenses or even nationally based ones if they have military ships and an ongoing piracy problem? The author appears to have not thought things out very well or done very little research. The title may be a clue: season 1 episode 1 - in other words, he was trying to write for TV, where effects and dramatic music can be used in place of thinking things through. For these reasons, I'm not likely to continue with the series, but taken on its own, the story told here is decent.
My rating: Six out of ten. By Amazon standards, a four star book.
A decent story, but not well thought through. Enjoyable, even if mostly popcorn level.
As an interstellar cruise liner gets underway, Earth's combined fleets come under assault from an unknown enemy. As Earth falls, they may be the only free humans left in the universe.
It's novella length, not novel, and obviously intended to be serialized but does have a story arc with a decent resolution within it.
Taken on it's own, a reasonable little story. Decent characters, even if they are way too dramatic for purposes of chewing scenery.
There are lots of unanswered questions and things that don't make sense - like how did the aliens get such sterling intelligence without Earth intelligence or military realizing what was going on (especially if even civilian grade sensors are as good as depicted)? If you don't know where they're from, how can you run away (as opposed to blundering into the middle of them)? Did Earth's military put up any kind of resistance at all, or were they simply overwhelmed and slaughtered (and if the latter, why is one of their jerry-rigged guns worth anything?) Why in the heck does Earth not have planetary defenses or even nationally based ones if they have military ships and an ongoing piracy problem? The author appears to have not thought things out very well or done very little research. The title may be a clue: season 1 episode 1 - in other words, he was trying to write for TV, where effects and dramatic music can be used in place of thinking things through. For these reasons, I'm not likely to continue with the series, but taken on its own, the story told here is decent.
My rating: Six out of ten. By Amazon standards, a four star book.
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