This is an interesting series, not what I thought it was going to be. My understanding of a “brigade” is that it’s a subdivision of an army consisting of several battalions. I didn’t and still don’t, consider a group of people, military or otherwise as a “brigade”, but in this book, a “Star Brigade” appears to be a group of fix to six humans or aliens, physically and mentally enhanced, that form a tactical elite unit. And, for some strange reason, each one is designated a “Brigadier” which I always associated to the rank of Brigadier General. So, right from the start, we need to understand that we don’t have a bunch of superhero brigadier generals running around doing things. I don’t know if the author has ever served in the military, but his use of the term “brigade” in this story leads me to believe he did not nor did he obtain any prior military expert input into his story. That, I don’t understand either.
There are a lot of writers that seem to want to make up their own military even though they are using human soldiers as characters in their story. This is OK as long as you some how, explain your military organization some where during the story. Additionally, it would seem prudent for an author to ask for some kind of military expertise during the writing of their book, just to make things seem reasonable. Still, I’m not a writer, so I probably should shut up about this and just enjoy the story, which I did. But, my military background kept getting confused. And, I was already confused with the following.
Names! I know every science fiction writer has to come up with the names or their character some how. I have no idea how the author of this book came up with the names of his characters. I surmise that he just happened to pound on his keyboard until something like a name showed up. I mean, “Habraum Nwosu”, “Honaa Ishliba”, “Commander Samantha D’Urso” (well, Samantha is OK), “V’Korram Prydyri-Ravlek”, and last, but probably the easiest, “Tharydane”, are not names that show up on every other kid born in the U.S. or even on Earth. Well, at least I don’t think they do. And yes, a couple of these beings are aliens with their own entire language, that I understand. But, couldn’t the author at least make these name pronounceable by English speaking readers which is a significant target audience. Of course, other version of this book written for different languages will have their own troubles with some of these names. But, I just have a pet peeve about trying to read a book and having to stop every so often just to try and remember what I thought this character was called in my mind. It slows down my reading and kind of breaks the story. Just because you’re writing a science fiction story doesn’t mean it has to be written in an alien dialect! What’s the matter with Captain Bob, or Colonel Joe, how about Sergeant John Smith?
Ok, the rest of the book involves the pending trade merger between the Galactic Union and the Kedri Imperium taking place on the planet, “Terra Sollus”. This was to be a big, very big, event arranged through long and hard work by the Galactic Union Chouncilor (whatever that is) Aristotle Bogosian. He’s waiting for the arrival of his Imperial Majesty Orok of House Kel, Sovereign of the Kendri Imperium, Lord Imperator of the Imperium Military, Scion of Kedria, Blood of the Old World, Paramount Warrior of the Realm.
Terra Solius happens to also be the former home of a race called the Korvanites. A long time ago, a small group of young Korvanites flew a ship to Earth and dropped what amounted to be a planet-killer nuclear bomb. For all practical purposes, Earth was left uninhabitable. But, humans had long ago reached the stars and had many colonies well established with a large and well established space military. The Humans came to, what was then called “Sollus”, and took the planet for their new home world. Now calling the planet “Terra Sollus”, they declared all Korvanites as a slave race and imprisoned all the Korvanites they didn’t kill. Now the Korvanite Liberation Front (KIF) has come back to free Sollus. They are led by a Korvanite head-case called Malestrom. Of course, Star Brigade has to stop him, some how, some way or die!