Ah..good thing I fought the temptation to buy the book. A few more dollars saved for me.

OK, "agreed" on pull. I did understand what it meant, I guess I was bothered by it because it seemed like the author was trying to find that "cool" word and it didn't work. So you're right, bad example. But, that still doesn't get him off the hook for saying the guy takes another pull of his beer when they didn't say he took one in the first place. That part just seemed unatural, like he meant to say the girl took another pull of her beer instead.

Keep in mind this is only one of the first examples of weird wording I could think of. There are several in the book that are better I just couldn't think of them at the time. There is one that I have to go back and find and then you will understand where i'm coming from better. I can't remember right now how it went but it made my head spin. It was something like "when you want to throw a rock but someone else throws a rock at you because they think you want to throw it at them and you think that was like if you wanted to throw a rock and the rock got thrown at them instead of you throwing it."...... huh? Trust me on this one, I'll find it and send it in for anilization.

Man I'm starting to sound like I'm really ripping on this book as if I hate it. Again for everyone I don't hate it. Just was making some opinions on it.

As I said before, I fully agree with you on all your other points ;)
There were some serious syntactic mistakes in that book. Most of the time, they were technically grammatically correct, but they didn't make any sense. There were a few paragraphs that I had to read two or three times in order to determine what was meant from the context. That bugs me, since it indicates a lazy writer, and yes, a lazy editor (a copy-editor only checks spelling and grammar - an editor checks to make sure the writing makes sense and reads well).
Overall, I felt that the book wasn't bad. It just wasn't all that _good_ either. Mostly it was just mediocre.

A book hardly needs to explain every step in the action IMHO, some simple and obvious actions can just be assumed. I feel it is perfectly legitimate to take "another" pull on a beer without having it stated that a first one was taken. After all, if you have a beer in front of you, do you just let it sit there until the author says you can drink? ;)


BTW, I believe "pull" in the meaning of "to take a deep drink" is more common in British English.

-------------
Edit: typo :(

Nope, "rang off" is correct. She was talking on the telephone and to ring off means to hang up the phone. This is typically British English although I believe it is used in Canada some as well. (In fact, I suspect the author is Canadian.)

Sorry, nothing wrong with that sentence gramatically. It is usually considered poor style, however, to start a sentence with "And".

This is one of several instances in which another rewrite would have helped the book. It's a nice thought in there - regretting votes just made on the drive home - but it distracts in this context. It should have been edited out or at least re-written.


Now, that I've finished the book, I must say I rather liked it. The writing was a bit choppy at times, although I didn't actually have any trouble with it. However, the characterization was adequate (although it did not go into great detail and further development of characters was rather limited) and the BT language was mostly used correctly (although there were a few annoying mixups like JumpShip when they meant DropShip - used correctly 2 pages later - and streak missiles that weren't). The plot was rather well done for the most part. I thought a few things needed more justification and would have greatly appreciated it if the characters hadn't been so black and white. (And the villain was just too stupid to believe.) However, the author resisted the temptation to build in a few clichés and standard plot devices - a noteworthy effort I at least appreciate.
All in all, I'd give the book a B-, better than the Delrio books, but not as good as the Coleman books or my personal favorite to date, York's Fortress of Lies. In other words, average for a BT novel. Just a nice, pleasant read.

I liked the book as well - slow starting but fun once it got going. I think a lot of the vocab/style choices were consciously made in an attempt to represent the local/provincial setting. Plus, it featured a sexy redhead...

In all fairness now that I'm done with the book I can say I liked it as well. But, and there always is a but.... I think maybe it's because the author seemed to change gears somewhere in the middle of the book. It doesn't seem like the last two thirds of the book were as diffucult to read as far as the slang went. It's like people stopped talking with accents or something. So there you have it. The one thing I wish the author would have done is find another way to say targeting solution. Seems like that was uses a ton in the book. Oh well now I'm just nit picking. Decent book.

-js- nailed it . . .most of the language you didn't understand is common phrasing in British English. Those are the sorts of things that editing should catch . . .it's perfectly acceptable for the author to write using their idiomatic English, possibly even pointing to Grace's Irish background for reason enough to use British English. Although Jobe seemed lacking in Africanisms in his speech . . .

Frankly the language wasn't a problem for me .. ..too many 'main' characters was. The mercenary group Grace hires is too large, we never get to know most of them, other than overly broad characitures of them. One token highlander was enough. Benjork was the only really well fleshed out member of Grace's team. Even her neighbors paled next to his pale complexion.

With large battle groups it's often easy to introduce too amny characters in an effort to create sympathy. Try to resist the temptation . .. .too many people and we'll lose interst.

I read it in two days. I enjoyed it a lot, but it could stand a little housekeeping.

Sorry folks, I've got to say that this was another waste of money. The MW novels are batting about 50/50 with me. Please, no more first time Battletech authors! We need to finish fleshing out the universe and Mike Roscoe's tale of IndyMech madness was a throwback that was not needed.

Bring on the main players, more characters that we have units of. No more common man stories for a while! We get it, life is hard for the dirt farmers since the HPG went down. What are the big boys doing to get them back up and running? That's where I want the stories to come from.

Maybe a nice MW anthology book could hit a lot of tales from around the Republic. or should that be The Republic? I wish the authors would maintain consistency on that, because the capitalized "The" in the middle of a page is just disturbing.

Randy

I liked it! :)

I'm about halfway through this book and I have to say that so far I am finding it quite enjoyable. I waited a few months to read this because I found the first chapter unenjoyable the first time I picked it up. The second time around, though, I found that once I made it past the first chapter I really got into it.

Regarding the author's writing I don't really find it very difficult to follow what he is saying/trying to say. I have found quite a few errors in this book, however, all of the MechWarrior novels to date have suffered from piss-poor editing.

Not only was the book not edited by someone with a passing familiarity with the English language, it certainly wasn't edited by someone familiar with BattleTech/MechWarrior. There was a particularly grating example in the first or second chapter where they kept mixing up the terms DropShip and JumpShip. I suppose one should not expect any better from Roc. For more fun, research Mike Stackpole's thoughts on this publishing company and how they forced him to cut down the length of his novels.

These problems aside which are not the author's fault, I think I would like to see more work by Moscoe in the BattleTech universe. At the very least its got to be better than that "Field to Field" short-story tripe on the WizKids site. Or "The Ruins of Power"...

Aleks