The Redemption Trilogy

Mike Smith
ISBN N/A
Rating: Buy, Paperback, New

The Redemption Trilogy is a trio (d'uh) of books describing the adventures of Jon Radec and Sophia Aurelius.  The books are available through Amazon.  At the time of this writing the first book is free.

In the first book Jon Radec is the last surviving Praetorian in the midst of a coup by an admiral of the imperial navy. Flashbacks throughout the book serve to fill in back story as Radec tries to get Sophia to safety on Eden Prime, the capitol of the Empire.

The pace of the story is pretty good and the characters are likable.  The setting strains my credulity as does Radec's almost supernatural abilities but the story sucked me in despite the flaws and I thoroughly enjoyed the first book.The first book is the best of the three by the way.  I enjoyed it despite a number of glaring editing errors.  I find that gross grammatical errors kick me out of my willing suspension disbelief and into a rant about bad editing.  The worst sins for me are wrong tense and incorrect choice of a homonym like to, two, or too.  Spell check never catches this and the editors should actually read the results rather than depend on spell check.

The second and third book weren't really as good.  There are a number of sex scenes and those scenes combined with the editing flaws were just too jarring.  I don't really enjoy reading sex scenes in my sci-fi. There are books where it works, John Ringo's Ghost the first time you read it.  The second time you read it just skip the sex scenes.  Sex scenes in Sci-fi boil down to this truism for me, if I'm not getting any then I'm PO'd that a fictional character gets more action than me, if I'm getting some then I'm not really interested in reading about anybody's sex life. Your mileage may vary but sci-fi or fantasy erotica is not my cup of tea.

I also found that in order to continue a love triangle from the first book the author had to lop about thirty points off the main protagonists IQ to make it work.  I'm afraid I like smart characters and I find love triangles to be the worst plot device ever used.  In my opinion it should be relegated to the rubbish heap of literature.

Despite my somewhat harsh tone overall I don't regret buying the books but I'm unlikely to want to revisit the series or setting for subsequent series.