Just a quick note to cap my experience with this series. I stumbled across it as part of my Military Science Fiction binge and wound up really enjoying it. I wrote a balanced but largely favorable review of the first book:
http://booksofbrian.com/on-the-nightstand-empire-of-bones-5-13-2018/
…one that was good enough to prompt me to read through 6 of the remaining 7 titles in the series. After doing so, I can honestly say that I’ve ended where I began – average books that turned out to be a whole lot of fun.
Be warned – to enjoy this series – you have to enjoy a simplistic, good guy vs. bad guy type of military Space Opera. You won’t find any subtleties in these books, they don’t raise meaningful issues and they don’t provoke deep thought. What you will get is plenty of action and plenty of Knight In Shining Armor heroes and heroines. Each book is based on a predictable formula – Terry Mixon has a blueprint and he sticks to it – allowing him to churn these out pretty rapidly – 8 books in less than 4 years – but it generally works – if you’re reading with a forgiving eye.
It also helps that they’re short quick reads – you can finish a title in ~4 hours of uninterrupted reading. I was able to finish 7 of 8 in a little over two weeks – testament to the fact that there’s really no such thing as “uninterrupted reading”. This was actually a positive for me – not unusual with this genre – as it provides a fair bit of immediate gratification. You’re not going to read every word, you’re not going pause to consider the larger implications of a plot development or the meaning of an exchange between the characters. You’re just going to drive through, fight the fights, watch the New Terran Empire find new allies and develop new and powerful capabilities and win battles. It’s just good fun.
It was enough to prompt me to pause my binge and get back to the regularly scheduled programming – satisfied in the knowledge that the whole exercise left me with another 21 titles from 4 other series that I can come back to any time I get bitten by this particular bug. In the meantime, I shifted back to my May releases, was able to finish “The Wolf” – review forthcoming – and get halfway through “Artificial Condition” by Martha Wells – second book in the Murderbot series. Once done there, I’ll probably circle back around and finish #8 in this series – for no other reason but a sense of closure – until Mixon releases another entry.
Overall, worth every minute. 🙂
That leads to a second question then.
Are these primarily space ship battles, or ground pounder battles?
And just as a continued fyi, I’m still getting no notifications OR email notifications…
How much of a “forgiving eye” are we talking about? Bad grammar, awkward writing? Or just not quite as polished as say Brandon Sanderson?
Appreciate the question and I don’t know that I have a fully formed answer – the writing is decent – could have used a sharper proof-reading eye but that’s small beans as far as I’m concerned. The characters are fun – I enjoyed Princess Kelsey Bandar the same way I enjoyed Kiva Lagos in “The Collapsing Empire. It’s just very pulpy. I felt a bit like I was reading a comic book story arc that stretched across 7 full books. I loved it but…I also enjoy comic books. If you like old school Space Opera – I think you’ll have fun with these. I’d say try the first and see if it pulls you in. Cheers