Review by felipemguerra -- Steel Reign: Flight of The St...
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Review by felipemguerra -- Steel Reign: Flight of The St...
[Following is a volunteer review of "Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord" by Braxton Cosby.]
“A Thief turned Spy, turned Bounty Hunter, turned Hero!”, announces the description of the space adventure Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord, by Braxton Cosby. The author is an expert in the genre, with several other works published, and this is the first book in a new series. In other words, the conclusion is open, with a cliffhanger for future adventures, which may displease the reader who is looking for a single narrative.
The protagonist is Steel Reign, a retired spy who is trying to rescue his half sister Olia from the clutches of a space pirate named Forge. She is held prisoner in a gigantic ship called Eclipse, and forced to fight to the death in a kind of arena. In order to gain access to the Eclipse, Reign must steal a ship called Concord with a little help of a hacker named Gifford and a pilot known as Stink. An old love from the past, the spy Serias, also appears to save him whenever necessary.
First of all, I grew up reading the adventures of Perry Rhodan, the space agent who starred in a German series of sci-fi adventures with more than 3,000 books published. The atmosphere of this novel reminded me of Perry Rhodan: the story is simple and the narrative is fast-paced, with lots of action scenes (shootings with laser pistols, chases with fast spaceships) and great chemistry between the characters. There is nothing special about the story or how it is narrated, but the author manages to hold the reader's attention from the first to the last page.
It is quite clear that Cosby is a science fiction fanatic, and makes references to several successful series. The Eclipse fortress, for example, looks like the Death Star of “Star Wars” (and even has “a weakness in the ventilation system”, like the one that allowed Luke Skywalker to destroy the Death Star in the 1977 film). The universe in which the story takes place is composed of planets divided between “Great Houses”; one of them is a frozen planet, Ravinia, coveted by everyone else because it is the only source of a rare mineral known as Oramite. Well, if we exchange the frozen planet for a desertic one, and the Oramite for Spice, we have precisely the universe of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. Finally, the antihero Steel Reign seems to have been molded from the Snake Plissken played by Kurt Russell in the film “Escape from New York” (1981), being even blind in one eye – which was replaced by a digital prosthesis that allows him to see with some upgrades.
In the midst of this cocktail of references, the author presents some very interesting technologies of this space/futuristic world, such as an artificial intelligence called N.I.N.A. (Neo Intelligent Neurological Automation), a digital photo that ages the people portrayed to follow their real age, and even a bar that manipulates the customers' brains so that the bartender has the voice and the name of their old lovers!
As other reviewers have already commented, one thing that really distracted me while reading was the fact that Cosby put numerals in place of words, which sometimes confuses the reader (the 1 is very similar to the “I” in some sentences , and phrases like “You're the 1 who tried” don't sound right). He also avoids the abuse of swearing by changing the spelling of these terms, using “sheat”, “bullsheat”, “sheatload”, “fook”, “fooking”, etc.
But two other things really bothered me.
One of them is that it’s clear from the beginning that the protagonist Reign does not have a plan to rescue Olia, and so the narrative develops in a random way: first he tries to get a precious artifact to exchange for his sister, which does not happen; then he joins Gifford by pure chance; then they decide to steal the Concord to have a bargaining chip to enter Eclipse; then they need to convince the only pilot capable of flying it to join them, and so on, always depending more on luck than on any defined strategy. It looks like bad storytelling.
The other thing that bothered me is the way female characters are used in the plot, in an unnecessarily sexist way. Whenever the male characters interact with a woman (to buy tickets on space flights, for example), the girls absurdly flirt with them. Reign uses vulgar expressions whenever he addresses a woman (like “You skipped right past the foreplay and went straight for penetration”). And Serias, the protagonist's love of the past, is totally underused: she appears only when it is necessary to save Reign's skin, and then both spend time arguing.
All things considered, Steel Reign is a character with the potential to star in his own long series of adventures, but Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord has so many loose ends (in addition to entire chapters explaining the character's past and the political intrigues of the universe in which he lives) that not all readers will be motivated to continue following the trajectory of Thief turned Spy, turned Bounty Hunter, turned Hero...
I rate Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord 2 out of 4 stars, but I believe that the author has good ideas and a great protagonist, and can correct some of the problems in the next adventures.
******
Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
“A Thief turned Spy, turned Bounty Hunter, turned Hero!”, announces the description of the space adventure Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord, by Braxton Cosby. The author is an expert in the genre, with several other works published, and this is the first book in a new series. In other words, the conclusion is open, with a cliffhanger for future adventures, which may displease the reader who is looking for a single narrative.
The protagonist is Steel Reign, a retired spy who is trying to rescue his half sister Olia from the clutches of a space pirate named Forge. She is held prisoner in a gigantic ship called Eclipse, and forced to fight to the death in a kind of arena. In order to gain access to the Eclipse, Reign must steal a ship called Concord with a little help of a hacker named Gifford and a pilot known as Stink. An old love from the past, the spy Serias, also appears to save him whenever necessary.
First of all, I grew up reading the adventures of Perry Rhodan, the space agent who starred in a German series of sci-fi adventures with more than 3,000 books published. The atmosphere of this novel reminded me of Perry Rhodan: the story is simple and the narrative is fast-paced, with lots of action scenes (shootings with laser pistols, chases with fast spaceships) and great chemistry between the characters. There is nothing special about the story or how it is narrated, but the author manages to hold the reader's attention from the first to the last page.
It is quite clear that Cosby is a science fiction fanatic, and makes references to several successful series. The Eclipse fortress, for example, looks like the Death Star of “Star Wars” (and even has “a weakness in the ventilation system”, like the one that allowed Luke Skywalker to destroy the Death Star in the 1977 film). The universe in which the story takes place is composed of planets divided between “Great Houses”; one of them is a frozen planet, Ravinia, coveted by everyone else because it is the only source of a rare mineral known as Oramite. Well, if we exchange the frozen planet for a desertic one, and the Oramite for Spice, we have precisely the universe of Frank Herbert’s “Dune”. Finally, the antihero Steel Reign seems to have been molded from the Snake Plissken played by Kurt Russell in the film “Escape from New York” (1981), being even blind in one eye – which was replaced by a digital prosthesis that allows him to see with some upgrades.
In the midst of this cocktail of references, the author presents some very interesting technologies of this space/futuristic world, such as an artificial intelligence called N.I.N.A. (Neo Intelligent Neurological Automation), a digital photo that ages the people portrayed to follow their real age, and even a bar that manipulates the customers' brains so that the bartender has the voice and the name of their old lovers!
As other reviewers have already commented, one thing that really distracted me while reading was the fact that Cosby put numerals in place of words, which sometimes confuses the reader (the 1 is very similar to the “I” in some sentences , and phrases like “You're the 1 who tried” don't sound right). He also avoids the abuse of swearing by changing the spelling of these terms, using “sheat”, “bullsheat”, “sheatload”, “fook”, “fooking”, etc.
But two other things really bothered me.
One of them is that it’s clear from the beginning that the protagonist Reign does not have a plan to rescue Olia, and so the narrative develops in a random way: first he tries to get a precious artifact to exchange for his sister, which does not happen; then he joins Gifford by pure chance; then they decide to steal the Concord to have a bargaining chip to enter Eclipse; then they need to convince the only pilot capable of flying it to join them, and so on, always depending more on luck than on any defined strategy. It looks like bad storytelling.
The other thing that bothered me is the way female characters are used in the plot, in an unnecessarily sexist way. Whenever the male characters interact with a woman (to buy tickets on space flights, for example), the girls absurdly flirt with them. Reign uses vulgar expressions whenever he addresses a woman (like “You skipped right past the foreplay and went straight for penetration”). And Serias, the protagonist's love of the past, is totally underused: she appears only when it is necessary to save Reign's skin, and then both spend time arguing.
All things considered, Steel Reign is a character with the potential to star in his own long series of adventures, but Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord has so many loose ends (in addition to entire chapters explaining the character's past and the political intrigues of the universe in which he lives) that not all readers will be motivated to continue following the trajectory of Thief turned Spy, turned Bounty Hunter, turned Hero...
I rate Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord 2 out of 4 stars, but I believe that the author has good ideas and a great protagonist, and can correct some of the problems in the next adventures.
******
Steel Reign: Flight of The Starship Concord
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Latest Review: Watchwords (black and white) by Philip Neal Gatter
