Review of "Dissolution of Peace" by Richard Flores IV - written by Jess Mountifield

Story Overview
 

When Earth Navy Captain Christina Serenity is brutally attacked by a traitor, her life is saved by Security Forces Corporal Michael Carlson. On the heels of her recovery, her ship is attacked by terrorists, and she is thrown into a difficult assignment. She must chase after the only clue they have, a Martian ship called the Phobos, and find out what secrets it hides. To make matters worse, someone still wants her dead.

Her ship, E.S.S. Australia embarks on a mission that leads Serenity on journey of discovery, friendship, betrayal, and revenge. She quickly learns the only thing harder to prevent than war, is love.

Now Serenity must trust her protection crew to keep her alive long enough to solve this puzzle while trying to prevent an interplanetary war.

The line has been drawn. Who will cross first?

Cover: 17/20

The cover for this book made me think of traditional sci-fi space covers so I think that's a great thing for an indie cover, my only slight niggle is not being able to read the small print on the top of the book very easily and considering how ebooks are going and the whole thumbnail thing works I'd prefer that to be larger.

Characters: 11/20

I liked the Captain in this novel but unfortunately I found the rest of the characters were a little bland. The descriptions of them were all fairly samey and with how little was shown of them I found it difficult to relate to them. Just couldn't quite care for their fate or feel worried when their lives were in danger.

Storyline: 12/20

There was a large amount of action in this book, often resulting in the main characters going from one sort of fight to another very quickly. I often wondered how they would cope with the stress levels of being in danger that often. The action was all described really well but I'd have preferred a longer book that meandered around and had maybe one or two less battles, or at least a greater variety of reasons for getting into them.

Style: 5/20

This was probably my least favourite part of the book, which is a shame really. I just found the pacing was far too full on and I was told stuff about the characters in the gaps without being shown it. The relationships would have felt more real if they'd been allowed the limelight in a bigger way.

I also felt that the book glided over details that would have been useful and then inserted others that seemed to be unimportant, like the sex scenes. I actually think the book would do better without any reference to the sex, almost like it was chucked in to try and show the relationships, but without any real build up being shown it just seemed shallow.

As a result of the style I was kept on the edge of my seat but just wasn't connecting or relating to anyone.

Spelling and Grammar: 10/20

I noticed more mistakes than I'd have liked and it could do with a final proofread to pick those out but it wasn't too bad.

On top of that I would occasionally find that some words were in a tiny font, but it would just be odd words here and there, which was rather distracting and random paragraphs would have a right hand indent all through them for some reason, so the formatting needs a look over.

Finally, there was one of my pet peeves. The dreaded 'could care less' phrase which should actually be 'couldn't care less'. If someone could care less, then they care to some degree. That one drives me up the wall.

Conclusion: 55/100

This book and author have a lot of potential and the action is good as well as the cover design, just needs to work out the kinks, and show more of the relevant relationships and characters, possibly giving more description dropped in here and there and more dialogue.

 

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