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1 out of 4 stars
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The government has an experimental military program to help those soldiers injured in combat. It's called the Artificial Military Prosthetics Division. When Chase's convoy is attacked, he becomes part of the program, gaining an artificial arm and leg. After getting up to speed, he and the other members of A.M.P.D. are sent on a mission to save the world from some very bad people. Unfortunately, things are not as they seem. Chase and his team are caught in the middle of a war bigger than they could imagine. Will they be able to save the day?
A.M.P.D Artificial Military Prosthetics by Thomas Hraynyk is a science fiction novel with more action than hard science. At only 150 pages, the book is a quick read. With some language, violence, and innuendos, this would be appropriate for older teens and adults.
The author does a good job of moving the story along quickly, leaving very little time for boredom. I enjoyed the nature of the story; Mr. Hraynyk has a good premise for a book. Unfortunately, the idea isn't fully realized, which leaves the reader feeling disappointed.
First, while the story is fast-paced, it is sometimes to the detriment of the character development. The author discusses characters not trusting others because of issues in the past, but these situations are never detailed. Furthermore, it's difficult to distinguish one character from another because they are never fleshed out. Even keeping track of each character's name was problematic simply because one blended into the next. If Mr. Hraynyk took a little more time with the backstory, the reader would be able to get involved more fully in the story, even if it made the book a little longer.
Another problem was the lack of editing. More than grammatical errors (though there were plenty of those as well), there were several instances of repetition. There were abbreviations used but never explained. I'm still not sure what "HGH" and "SWFA" are. The perspective changes abruptly in spots, and it took me reading through a couple of times to figure out what happened. Characters' thoughts aren't differentiated in any way. The actual grammatical errors were too numerous to count and consisted of missing or incorrect words, missing punctuation, and typographical errors.
There were also parts of the book that seemed unrealistic. It didn't seem to be the author requiring suspension of disbelief by the audience, but rather it seemed to be poor handling of situations. For instance, a soldier fires on the enemy. They start firing back, which catches him off guard. Did he expect them to stand and do nothing while he shot them all down?
Lastly, it's important to note that the story seems to merely stop. I wouldn't even call it a cliffhanger ending. Nothing is wrapped up, and it mentions that there's a part two coming.
To summarize, while I appreciated the idea behind the story, it's too raw to appeal to a mass audience. Thus, I rate A.M.P.D Artificial Military Prosthetics 1 out of 4 stars. With some professional editing and much better character development, this story could be great. As it is, I can't recommend it to anyone. I can't wait to see what the author makes of this in the future.
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A.M.P.D Artificial Military Prosthetics
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