Review: 47 Echo

Book Details

Title:
47 Echo

Author: 
Shawn Kupfer

Genre:
Military SF

Page Count:
236

Publishing Info: 
January 17, 2011 from Carina Press

Why I Read It:
netgalley review copy

Grade: 
B- (promising, but could've been better)

Cover Thoughts:
I really love this cover--from the buildings in the background, to the silhouettes of the soldiers, it's just perfect for the story.

My Review

In a futuristic society, Nick Morrow is a convict who is assigned to 47 Echo, a suicide squad in war-torn Russia.  47 Echo has only the hardest criminals, and from the start you get the sense that Nick doesn't really belong.  He's smart and has a great analytical mind, but he's half Chinese, and in a world where China attacked the U.S., that doesn't do him any favors.  This one grabbed me right from the start.

Nick is a great character, and was definitely one that I could really root for.  There were so many other soldiers coming in and out of the story so that, besides one or two others, I couldn't even remember who was who.  That made it a little harder to care about what happened to some of the characters.  Someone could die, and since I had no idea really who they were, it didn't really phase me.  It was just a character name.

47 Echo is set in a future world that is at war, and is classified as science fiction, but I didn't really see a whole lot in the way of sci-fi.  Sure, it takes place in the future, which I guess already takes it out of the realm of regular fiction, but for the most part it just felt like military fiction with a few things that I didn't recognize, like the vehicles.  The story is so straightforward and to the point that you really don't get many details on how things look or what the world is really like.

This one started off so good, but I was a little disappointed as I continued reading and found the writing lacked depth.  It was great as a quick, entertaining read, but I kept wondering when I was going to get to the meat of the story.  Where were the intricacies, the surprises, the plot twists . . . anything?  I couldn't really get a feel for what the story was supposed to even be about besides a group of soldiers.  And that's when I realized that was the story.  It's like the mindless action movies you watch when you don't want to have to think and you just want to see stuff blowing up.  

In fact, as I was reading, I kept thinking this would make a great action movie.  Maybe the author should look into writing movie scripts.  There is quite a bit of language in this one, and violence, of course.  And if the word "smirk" bothers you, steer clear of this one because the author uses it constantly.  All in all, I would probably read another book by this author, and would recommend it to someone who was looking for a quick action-style read.