Yesterday a wannabe pro-gamer, today an alien admiral.
Evan was desperate to hit the big time playing Star Commander, the world’s most popular real-time strategy game. While Evan works hard to get the pros to notice him, it's very different eyes that are captivated by Evan's progress.
The Kirran Hegemony is at war. Outclassed at every step, the aliens turn to the most warlike race they know—humanity! Abducted from Earth, Evan finds himself fighting for his life, using his skills to command Hegemony forces in desperate battle.
Now, helped by fellow humans, Evan must prove victory can be grasped from the jaws of impossible odds.
My Opinion: 180 pages, $3.99, Available On Kindle Unlimited
This is an almost great space RTS story. It has a Last Starfighter kind of premise with five people being taken from earth because they’re good players of a popular RTS and the aliens need help fighting an enemy that doesn’t conform to their outdated and stagnant strategies.
The RTS elements of gathering materials and fabricating different ships to beat your opponent come through really well and clearly without feeling tacked onto a generic sci-fi story. Instead, the game mechanics feel totally natural and I really enjoyed the author’s knowledge of specific tactics used in these games and how that kind of thinking was applied to the space combat.
Though the pacing was a little predictable, it was still well done with the game stuff introduced in the first half and more space fighting action in the last with nice little surprises in the story. The only complaint I had, besides the occasional technical writing issue, was with the storytelling is the novel length. It felt a bit short for the genre and I could have seen it being twice the length and still very enjoyable with more solid resolutions to the big story conflicts. Still, it’s a good setup for a series or a test to see if there’s readership for this kind of story.
Overall, a really good read if you like space fights and an especially good if you’re a fan of RTS games.
Score: 7.8 out of 10