Review: Contra Alliance: Shadows of the Past

The year is 2035. America's preeminence has withered. Global warming, scarce resources, and conflict have pushed the world to its breaking point. Throughout the increasing turmoil, a rogue group called The Revolution has risen to prominence seeking domination over humanity.
Shadows of the Past explores the adventures of a NATO Counter-Revolutionary (CONTRA) Strike Force as it battles against the mysterious organization. Elite Special Forces operators use advanced military technology to hunt The Revolution, finding its feared wickedness is worse than imagined. When secrets of the enemy's origin threaten accepted reality, dangers intensify.
Disturbing evidence exposed by CONTRA uncovers stunning truths about the galaxies. A covert faction of extraordinary messengers race to save Earth. Legends of the past and visions of the future collide when a long-dormant evil resurfaces to challenge the most powerful space alliance in the universe. The course of human history irrevocably alters, setting the world on an unforeseen path.

The first third of this book was a little hard to get into. There was quite a bit of infodumping and very little of the actual story. It made things hard to read and I think definitely could have been done more smoothly. The story takes place in the future, and it seems we were given every detail about what had previously gone on, the state of things now, etc. And then we got background details on just about every character. It began to get tedious.

Once I got past 100 pages or so, we got into the real meat of the story and it moved at a nice pace. There were still times when I was taken out of the story when the author stopped telling the story to give us more information. I did enjoy the story, but I think I could have liked it a whole lot better if not for that.

There were a lot of characters and I did get them confused at times, especially because they all had code names like Xxplosive, Justice, Rapidfire, Breakdown, and a lot more. And the bad guys had code names too (or their names were just weird like that), so when the story switched to the bad guy POV, it always took me a minute to realize.

I really think fans of military science fiction would like this one. It's not my usual genre, which may be why I struggled a bit with it. The book seems to be a very well thought out, well planned start to a series, and even though this book includes quite a lot of setup, I still liked it, and will continue on with the series. I'm quite interested to see what happens next. 

Book Details

Title: Contra Alliance: Shadows of the Past (The Contra Alliance Trilogy, Book One)

Author: Tom Kolega

Genre: Military Science Fiction

Page Count: 365

Publishing Info: January 2010

Why I Read It: review copy from author

Grade: B- (good, but with a few flaws)

Cover Thoughts: The cover is pretty cool.  It almost reminds me of X-Men, especially with the Professor X looking guy on the right.

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.