1 out of 4 stars
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A battle is being fought. This is no ordinary battle, though. This battle is being fought at the same time and place in two separate dimensions. One American battalion somehow gets lucky enough to travel from one battle to the other after an EMP. There they meet with some Machines of Destruction that give them Swords of Dark Matter. They must continue to fight battles, but all they really want is to return to their Earth.
I give Roxanne And The Netherworld 1 out of 4 stars. I normally wait until the end to reveal my rating; but in this case, I think it's pertinent to state it right up front. There are many reasons for this rating. The first is that I really didn't understand the plot; I'm just not sure what the point of the story was. The same battle was taking place in two different dimensions with two different races (one alien) and technology. That's it. There was no more to the story.
Secondly, if you hear the word battle and think this book is going to be filled with action, you're wrong. This really wasn't even about the battle. It was about different commanders on the two different worlds talking about the battles and planning for the battles. There was very little in the way of action, adventure or even changes of scenery.
Moving to my next point, while this book is stated to be science fiction, I would really call it a military novel. While there was some mention of a different dimension and different technology, the whole focus of the novel is a battle. As such, there were so many abbreviations and terms used with which I was unfamiliar. NBCW, 2IC, BMD and GPMG were a few of the abbreviations that I was forced to google.
Let's say none of the above has turned you off yet. Unfortunately, I have more to add. The editing in this book was absolutely abysmal. I poured over every sentence trying to decipher it. Think I'm exaggerating? Let me give you an example: "They were waring there brand new NBCW uniforms and we had on are old NBCW unifiroms." The author also enjoyed using the same words over again, and I don't think he was using them correctly. For example, instead of he/she said, the author liked to say he cogitated, he rhymed (no the characters were not rhyming) or he proselyted. Instead of exchanging glances, the characters liked to barter glances.
Another point of contention was the repetition found within the novel. This occurred within sentences, but there were also whole paragraphs that seemed to be reiterated for seemingly no reason. The following sentence is one such example. "Sergeant Jurgenson was standing next to Major McKinnon was the New Squadron Commander. Sergeant Jurgenson was standing next to him."
In case that isn't enough, the author threw out a whole bunch of names in a very short time at the beginning of the story as authors are wont to do sometimes. I did figure out some of the names, but this trend only continues throughout the novel. Eventually, I really had to stop trying to keep track of who was who.
It is for these reasons that I was forced to rate Roxanne only 1 star. I normally try to find something positive about every book, but I honestly cannot name one thing that I enjoyed. This book requires some serious reworking and editing before I could even begin to find someone to recommend it to.
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Roxanne
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