Exodus: Empires at War, Part II ★★✬☆☆

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Exodus: Empires at War, Part II
Series: Exodus: Empires at War #2
Author: Doug Dandridge
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 283
Words: 107.5K

Synopsis:

The Royal Family are assassinated, leaving Prince Number 3 as the new Emperor. Only he's out on a military ship about to go into battle against the aliens who beat the snot out of humanity 1000 years ago. With no way to use faster than light messaging, this story revolves around El Princeo escaping while lots of people die to ensure his survival.

And the scum sucking traitor who set up the Royal Family dies too.

My Thoughts:

Unfortunately, this book could have been at least 25% shorter, if not more, if the author hadn't felt the need to walk us through every excruciating step of the various space battles. For example, when Enemy Fleet #1 fires 100 missiles at Good Guy Fleet #2, we follow all 100 missiles to the bitter end. 50 get wiped out by 40 Good Guy Fleet anti-missiles. 20 are fooled by countermeasures and speed off into deep space. 10 are destroyed by close point defenses and then the final 10 blow up ships. (So kids, when a daddy missile and a mommy ship get together that's how you get Space Debris. If you have any questions, go talk to your parents, ok?) And then there was simply over-explanation of every maneuver, every change in speed or gravity, blah, blah blah. I started skipping whole PAGES.

Then there was the sex scene. Any book that has a sex scene(s) I'm going to ding at least half a star for. But for the love of writing, if you're going to do something, do it well! This scene felt like the thoughts of a 16 year old imagining what sex must be like. If you can't write scenes like this (because you're not a pornographer or filthy smut writer) then don't include it at all. How hard is it to understand that? Gaaaaahhhh!

I called the first book “decent”. This one descended into low mediocre territory. I'll be reading the third book but if it doesn't sharply improve I'll be abandong the series. I've got close to 100 books on my kindle and 250 (those do include the 70+ One Piece manga, but still) in my TBR pile in calibre, so I'm not hurting for books. I am working on dnf'ing series much sooner than I have in the past.

★★✬☆☆

• All of My "Exodus: Empires at War" Reviews

Exodus: Empires at War, Part I (Exodus: Empires at War #1) ★★★☆☆

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Exodus: Empires at War, Part I
Series: Exodus: Empires at War #1
Author: Doug Dandridge
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 255
Words: 103.5K

Synopsis:

Thousands of years ago, humanity began exploring the galaxy. A nascent empire was born. They encountered the Cara'carn, an alien empire that held itself to be pinnacle of life. The Cara'carn began a systematic slaughter of every system, world and moon that humanity had cultivated. Finally, all that was left was Earth. With 7 Ark ships, each equipped with a prototype FTL drive, humanity had to hope that at least one of the seven would escape and allow them to start over in an area unknown to the Cara'carn.

One ship did succeed. And they succeeded so well that Humanity became the dominant force in that galaxy and became a true Empire. Cara'carn became the bogeyman for the majority of humanity but the Empire never forgot that they had been driven away by a superior force. As such, they did their best to prepare for the inevitable clash when the two Empires met again.

This book chronicles the first encounters between the two Empires.

My Thoughts:

This was decent space opera. Dandridge did almost lose me because of the massive amount of POV's that he decided to use. I understood why he needed to use so many, as trying to get a good picture of an Empire that doesn't have instantaneous communications necessitates that, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. And if he continues to use such a plurality in future books I can guarantee I won't be continuing. But that's neither here nor there.

I really wish I had more to say, but “decent” sums it adequately. Nothing really bad beyond the POV's stood out to me and nothing really good stood out either. There is nothing wrong with being a “decent” story, it just makes it hard for the reviewer to say anything.

That being the case, I'm going to talk about the cover, because hey, why not? The layout reminded me VERY much of Mike Resnick's Starship series. Not exactly the same but so similar that even though I had finished the Starship series back in '13, these covers still reminded me of them. Starship was published from 2005-2009 and the Exodus: Empires at War series by Dandridge didn't start up until '12. So either they used the same cover artist (which is quite likely) or Dandridge pulled some skullduggery. While I always enjoy some good skullduggery, I'm going with using the same cover artist because nothing in Dandridge's writing suggests an evil mastermind genius.

★★★☆☆