Billed as "The Mandalorian meets Gladiator meets Firefly," I definitely wanted to check this out because I like all three of those things!

As it turns out, though, it's really none of those things. I've read a few Brandon Ellis books before and it's kind of the same thing over and over again. The guy has an incredible imagination and clearly has all these unique worlds and galaxies planned out ... but then doesn't put a ton of thought into characterization and storytelling (a lot of his stuff feels like rehashes of stuff that's already out there in pop culture: Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, etc.), and spends a ton of time throwing out as much worldbuilding as he can to make up for the fact that the characters are only mildly interesting and the plots are pretty basic. And there's only so many alien races and future tech that someone can name drop before I start rolling my eyes and going, "I don't even know what that is" and then losing interest before I ever find out.

This book is basically Down on His Luck Guy gets a Once In A Lifetime Opportunity to turn his life around if he'll only do One Last Mission for a Mysterious Employer He Doesn't Trust And Will Probably Try to Double Cross Him. Like I said, not the most original plot I've ever heard before, and the protagonist has a bit of a fatalistic streak to him that makes him kind of irritating to follow along with for 440 pages, as he's constantly moping around or complaining in his own head.

I wanted to like the book because I think a mashup of The Mandalorian, Gladiator, and Firefly would be super cool. But unfortunately it seems this book's only relation to those successful properties is the very basic character archetypes and plot points that were cribbed from them. I think Brandon Ellis is a talented writer, but he'd be so much better if he stopped trying to imitate the stuff he's a fan of, and went a little more original with his work.

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Created Jan 18, 2025 at 1:07pm • Submit your own review...