Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsNot worth the slog
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 18, 2022
This is a very low 3 star book. I won't punish it by giving it less as I think some people might be impressed by the long lists of equipment and the brisk pace of the overall plot. James Haddock is not a bad writer and his prose is relatively easy to read.
** Warning my review will spoil the book, but I feel its necessary to explain my rating **
Where I had issues with this book was the complete lack of character development. This story is about a young man who was out salvaging a battlefield with his father when his father is murdered. He organizes a group to go back and salvage the battlefield, but is betrayed. He sneaks away with some of the equipment and starts a 3rd salvaging group, but they are wiped out while he's recovering from surgery. So he starts a 4th group, but then leaves them for "reasons".
If you can't tell, this tale doesn't take the time to develop any characters. The main character is the only constant and he's largely a passive cypher who the plot swirls around. Yes, there is some great conspiracy that keeps trying to take him out, even though he isn't actively trying to hinder it. Yes, he does gain allies, but they just use him and force him to constantly move on.
For me this was a hard slog of a read. I didn't care for the main character, and I disliked just about everyone he encountered due to them being redshirts rather than fully fleshed out characters who mattered. It also led to a tale that lacked any guidance as to where it wanted to go. The main character seemed to be at a battlefield salvaging, or in a town hiring and preparing for his next journey to a battlefield.
So, I don't really recommend this one, but again, it's not terrible. Just had too much about all the equipment while forgetting a story needs to be about characters interacting with the world around them in interesting ways. Here there weren't really much in the way of characters and their interactions were boring at best.
