- #1
Typical strong to stronger novel with not so good writing (-1 star). Thou there is some tactical element.MC is not developed properly in moral cense - it can devour a whole ship with innocent cargo and at the same time he cares for other player, author tries to depict him as coldblooded killer focused on survival and at the same time there is no internal character disposition towards his companions to support such worldview. Also there is no children in this novel and no consequent dilemmas connected to their existence (and MC at least once must have met such dilemma by ch 130). At the same time MC for the first part of novel tells us that "stealth is the best basic" and does not follow this words - engages in many fights which he has all things needed to evade, which in turn fuels the conflict and his own danger level in the eyes of observers. Or while he could evade a fight, hide and look like simple alien predator, MC ends up disclosing that he is highly intelligent being thus rising the need to kill him to the maximum high which in turn leads to enemies sending elite military units to kill him instead simple androids. Incomprehensible. Other characters are also like this. (So this is another -1 star).Also there is a problem - for the most part ideas in this novel are secondhand i.e. spaceship arc from Alien (by Ridley Scott), jungle arc from Predator (by John McTiernan), deep station destruction from Deep Blue Sea (by Renny Harlin) are the few from which ideas were taken (author himself sometimes writes from which film a scene was taken). And yes - it is not forbidden, especially since author changes perspective. But this leads me to question what part of this novel is newly created (I'm not sure but maybe even ice planet and space station arcs were taken from somewhere). Combine it with too much of an action (the density is like John Wick 3-4) and well... You will novel without proper plot development. Change of pace or type of MC activity will be good for this novel. Especially since MC can at some point make mobs into obedient sl*ves (make some guys serve him, infiltrate Megacorp or Cult, create organization, develop it, get material advantages (materials, ships, additional helpers which don't know about him, information) and surprise his enemies with this unpredictable action (he was a solo player without any friends)). This would have been more safe warhammer type cult-like development then what author depicts presently.If you want better plot - go read about one famous white spider.If you want more of better writing - go read about dragon hatchling.But this? I do not recommend at present. Just to be sure, I'll read it till ch 250-300 and update if something changes.
