Star Nomad: Fallen Empire

 Perspective: 3rd person

Tense: Simple Past

Length: 229 pages

Like pretty much any book,  Star Nomad took me a little time to get into it. Not too much, just a chapter or so. The main character is a former Alliance pilot who fought against a repressive Empire. So yeah, it does sound like a knock off star wars. While that aspect of the book is a bit derivative,  the story overall is enjoyable. The prose was engaging enough and the book short enough that I finished in a few sittings. 

I enjoy the rather quick pacing of the book. That said the ending was really just a minor victory and rang a little hollow. Still, that is probably the point, as the book is a funnel into the series. Hopefully good enough to prompt you to buy the next. We can also see the author has engaged in some clever marketing, the book was written and released with two others in the series. Based on what I have read on Reedsy, this is a technique to help promote your books, as new books receive special treatment. 

Anyways, back to the book itself, I think the protagonist is pretty well established, you can understand her thought process and relate to her. Some other characters are a bit more mysterious and that is fine, in fact, intentional really, I’m sure.

The book does hit on some darker themes and covers it fairly gracefully. That said, I think I want to see some pirates that are perfect gentlemen, as the whole rapey pirate thing is a little cliche. 

One more complaint, the book often names things but doesn't initially describe them. For example a light comes from someone's “ear star.” I'm still not 100 percent sure what that looks like. Is this an orb over their shoulder, a light attached to their ear? I get the name drop and explain later is a style, sometimes a more descriptive style is also helpful. 

The other complaint and I suppose a minor spoiler. The first set of looters they run into, Alisha and her friend are held at gunpoint. Alisha has a gun pointed at the looter, the looter has a gun pointed at her. The looter commits in his mind to shooting her and Alisha “sees the determination in his eyes” so she shoots first. What? These criminals are so inept they televise on their faces what they are going to do and they do it slow enough someone can shoot them first? I don't know. I guess they really could be helpless. 

All those complaints were in chapter 1. After that I think it picks up and is better. Honestly, I hope I can find the second book in the series since I enjoyed the first. 

Some things I really liked about the book. In a scene they use a military uniform to quickly inform us about a person's background. The book explains how each ribbon or medal on the uniform represents a specific military achievement, a clever way to give backstory.

Sometimes the book does seem a little self important. One of the lines is something to the effect, there are no heroes in war, just pawns. Actually, I like my rephrasing better. Anyways, lots of people on kindle highlighted that. It just came off as preachy in my opinion. Otherwise the book was even quite witty and clever at times. The cyborg makes some good comments, I'll let them play themselves out. 

All in all, I would recommend the book. In fact, I hope the author reaches out for a review of some of the rest of the series! 

Amazon Link