Friday, May 1, 2009

Maelstrom by Taylor Anderson (review)



Title: Maelstrom
Author: Taylor Anderson
Illustrator: N/A
Pages: 387
Genre: Fiction
Dewey Decimal: F And
ISBN: 978-0-451-46253-4
Cost: $24.95

Anderson brings his Destroyermen trilogy to a rousing finale in Maelstrom. The two and a half hiccups I saw were easily pounded into the surf by the rest of the story.

Hiccup one is the title. It's just too hard to spell.

Hiccup two is the beginning of the story. It was slower to take off than I expected. When we left Captain Reddy and his crew, we knew a big fight was brewing. I should have expected it to take a while for the pot to boil, but I wanted it to overflow into madness right away.

Hiccup two and a half is the one or two spelling errors. Nothing major, but bad spelling always bugs me. At least it wasn't as rampant as the Grik.

The rest of the story was just fine. Better than fine actually. I have followed Anderson's work since I saw the blurb on the cover by S. M. Stirling (yes, I'm a fan, so sue me). The first two books were good and kept me interested. The third blew me out of the water. I was surprised to find myself more invested in the characters than I cared to admit to. And the action, the final battle specifically, was much more refined, smooth, and, well, full of action!

The final battle sequence takes up a good portion of the final half of the book. You know it's coming and you're glad when it gets there. You know how it will end, but there are some losses along the way. Fortunately, none of the characters I liked died (Anderson is a kind God).

Now, most interesting of all, is the news that came in March. Something you won't hear much about as Anderson hasn't quite made that "big name in lights" status. What's the news? He gets to write more about the Destroyermen! He left the first series open enough for more adventures and I'm hoping we'll read more about the crew of the USS Walker, the Lemurians, the Grik, and the "others."

2 comments:

RobB said...

I read and reviewed the first two, so I'm looking forward to jumping into the third myself. These are good, solid entertaining novels.

Neil Richard said...

They are a lot of fun to read. And they're not quite as dense or heavy as Stirling's work. Not that Anderson's work is "light" reading, but I don't think he's quite as evil as a "god" as Stirling is.