'Freedom's Fire Box Set' by Bobby Adair
'Freedom's Fire Box Set' by Bobby Adair

The good

  • This book series knows what it’s about—space military battles—and doesn’t try to do much more than that. If you’re into spaceships, rail guns, shields, tactics, and so on, you’ll enjoy this series. If not, you won’t. It’s more or less non stop battles from start to finish, and the few moments between battles are mostly spent planning and preparing for battles.

  • An interesting sci fi universe where, right out of the gate, humans have been conquered by aliens.

  • The alien species are reasonably interesting and at least a little different than humans.

  • Some cool tech, mostly focused around manipulation of gravity.

  • A few well-developed and fun characters.

  • A reasonably satisfying plot arc and conclusion to the series.

The not so good

  • Other than space battles, there’s not much here. Yes, there are a few speeches about freedom, and a sprinkling of romance, but this book series could essentially be an action-packed video game. Entertaining, but without much of a deeper message or new ideas, it’s not as sticky it could be. That’s OK, as long as you know what you’re getting into.

  • The degree of competence of the crew in their very first battles is a bit absurd. Would’ve been nice to see them fail a bit more before succeeding wildly.

  • The alien enemies seem a bit too smart at times, and a bit too dumb at other times, fluctuating wildly in intelligence as best suits the plot.

Rating: 4.5 stars