This book was highly more enjoyable than even the second book in the five book series was!  I truly loved it and finished the entire book in 1 day.  That’s right.  1 day. 298 pages, in one day.  Truly amazing read, light, quick and leaving me wanting more.  But I have to wait since my local library has yet to stock the latest two titles!

In this novel, Wilson Cole aboard his flagship, the Theodore Roosevelt, must find an equilibrium between morality and mercenary in the Inner Frontier.  Wilson doesn’t allow them take any assignments that are morally questionable, including anything that might harm too many innocent people.  Saving innocent people is something entirely different, and even though he is a mercenary, Wilson loves doing that for free.

Wilson and the crew make more memorable friends along the way, such as the Platinum Duke who owns Singapore Station, and Jacovic the former Commander of the Fifth Teroni Fleet.  In total, an excellent read!

I’m 150% sure that I enjoyed this book far more than it’s predecessor, Starship: Mutiny, which I reviewed a while back.  This book took a while longer to read since I had family over and the like, but once I got into it, I finished more than 150 pages in less than 3 hours.  It was a party.

Like the first book, this one revolves around Wilson Cole and the Theodore Roosevelt, as they decide they’d like to be pirates now that they’ve fled the Republic.  This adventure has more interesting characters, including a “fence” or dealer that calls himself David Copperfield and enjoys dressing up in the styles and clothing of that era.

A thoroughly enjoyable read was made even more enjoyable as Wilson Cole “finds himself,” in this book, and finds out that he isn’t cut out for the Pirate life, and he must do something in that Navy-esque type of way.  Good on him, and I await the next book, Starship: Mercenary.

After Cole is sent to the Theodor Roosevelt, for conduct unbecoming of an office[although it really wasn't], he must work with others that the Galactic Navy believes as bad officers and enlisted personnel.

Overall, I believed the book was exceptionally good.  Resnick’s humor throughout the novel was very well executed, and his writing style and voice clearly showed that he deserved the many awards he has received in his long and illustrious career as a science fiction writer.  The only drawback that I saw, was that besides the main character the others were very superficial.  Taking the alien Forrice, a Molarian with three legs and facial features like mush out of a blender [or I'm presuming from what I could read from the book], he has no depth or clear back story to him besides that he’s old friends with Wilson Cole and has a great sense of humor.  The length of the book was probably the main detracting factor from this, and I would have liked if Resnick could have written a longer, more indepth book.  However, the length did lend to the fast paced plot that Resnick wrote.  This entire book probably only spanned 2 weeks, and it was a wonderful, thrilling, 2 weeks.  There are 6 appendixes to the book, chronicling the nature of the universe that Resnick has created, and they include some very useful information if you care to read them. I read some of it, since much of it can be inferred from the actual novel.  Appendix Three actually has all of his other books that are set in the same universe [the Birthright Universe], and it says that there are 4 more books in this series [the Starship].

I plan to read all of them.  Bravo Mr. Resnick.

I swear there isn’t much more to say than that about this book.  It was an interesting read, not something I’d do again willingly.

At first I really liked this story, but after analyzing the hell out of it in English class, I found that it really struck more than chord with me.  Not a creepy chord, but an emotional one as this German man, who ascended to lordship [hence "von" in the book] finds his emotional side.  I liked the short story overall.  Very well written.

After several long months of reading Contagious by Scott Sigler, I finally finished.   I don’t really have much to say about this book besides that it was freakin’ amazing.  When I first began to read it, I had no idea that it had a prequel…which didn’t detract from reading this one at all. Of course, I didn’t know a lot of back story, but that didn’t really matter all that much from the story.

A basic synopsis would be that a deadly contagion from outer space takes over human beings and lays “hatch-lings” in their body.  Once these hatch-lings, hatch, they pull themselves free from the human host and try to build gateways to contact their home world and bring over an army or some force to take over the planet.

The best part of this novel is that 95% of the story is grounded in hard science, and EVERYTHING is explainable.  Scott took a great deal of time researching and understanding how everything would work.  This one of the things that makes Scott’s books amazing.  By the end of the book, I was so interested in Scott’s references to army machinery and aircraft, I searched every one of the technical names he used, and I found ALL of them.  Scott knows his shit.  Seriously.

I’m not sure this book had that many flaws.  A warning to the queasy, he does talk about some graphic details, like blood, gore, etc. but it’s pertinent to the story versus just some Quentin Tarantino shit.  He does also drop the “f-bomb” alot…which means that if you ever have read this blog, you wont mind reading the word “fuck.”  But, he doesn’t over use it like some of the modern screenwriters do.  He uses it when necessary.  It’s a humanizing characteristic when he uses it, and it really expands on the character’s emotions and their back story.

When he went on his “Stank Tour” to promote this book, I went to see him when he stopped in Falls Church, Virginia.  He’s a great guy to listen and talk to, and the way he explained his writing and why he uses what he uses, was really enlightening.  Most of the techniques he uses is to expand the characters and make them believable.  In public he doesn’t drop the “f-bomb” a lot, but if you ever read his blog at http://scottsigler.com  you’ll see he does use it himself.  I’m spending a lot of time on this profanity issue because some people really have an issue with reading profanity, or even hearing it.

Great book overall…highly recommended.