Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Basically, the first 15% of the book is pretty good, then nothing much happens for the next 75% while the crew refits and upgrades their spaceship. Then, in the last 10%, there is a muddled space battle and the crew is declared heroes. The long, tedious middle section of the book is made even more painful by at least a couple of department head meetings where the captain goes around the table and has each head report on progress, which go on for page after page. If you love such meetings at work, then this book is for you. As other reviewers have noted, the premise of this book requires superhuman suspension of disbelief. In short, a group of dedicated video game players hacks the government's most super secret war gaming computer, and when they are caught, the government is so impressed with their skill that they are given a real warship to cruise around the galaxy in to look for things that they find interesting. Oh, and to ensure the success of their mission, the admiral assigns her drop dead babe daughter, the best engineer in the fleet of course, to the gamers' spaceship. Needless to say, she quickly hooks up with the captain. You have to admit, this is the kind of plot any 15 year old guy could make up while bored in social studies class. I've read a lot of great and well written science fiction over the past 50 years, and it is hard not to conclude that there is no substitute for a good editor, or just an editor. Like most of the cheap Kindle sci-fi I've read, this book contains a lot of dialog that would not make it past an even semi-comatose editor. Most of the book's 5 star reviews, and especially those by its apologists, say that it should be viewed as just a fun, easy, breezy read. Since I found it to be long and tedious, I don't plan to read any of the subsequent books.