I've gotten to page 50 or so of Clone Republic, by Steven Kent, which
is military SF / space opera. So far, I've found it excruciatingly
bad.
- Though we are in 2500 AD, the setup looks more like bored US
frontier soldiers somewhere near Texas, circa 1870. The aliens are so
badly characterized that you can't tell if they are humans from a
previous expansion cycle or real aliens.
- The military part is uninspiring, both in terms of equipment (not
much novelty 500 years from now) and in terms of tactics and
descriptions of battle scenes.
- The characters aren't, quite, Pulitzer material and the writing is
on par with the rest.
Even lowering expectations due to it being military SF, this thing
seems like a pig with its lipstick removed. There are hints that
there might be something more to the book, because of the idea with
the clone soldiers and their political context. But I don't think
I'll be hanging around to figure it out.
Is there something that warrants a 4/5 rating on Amazon, with no one
awarding it a much deserved 1 star? It has about the same feedback as
the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell, which is much the better book,
despite not being flawless either. Am I missing out on some major
improvement in the plot that justifies the book's existence?
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