Phobos

Rating:
Summary: Gripping even with Star Trekkian mis-physics
Review: A space-opera whodunit suspense, complete with "no one is leaving this room until the guilty person here is exposed" scene. Good characters and story line. However, I stopped mentally listing the physics faux pas halfway through. And not nitpicky ones - blatant.

It's not the second law of thermodynamics that is responsible for recoil (it's Newton 2nd law); the zero-G antics are fun but often wrong (a chair with 20 kg mass is still MASS even on Phobos and if it hits you going 300kph or whatever it'll kill you); the shuttle impact on the surface as described must have taken place at 20mph or less or the hero would not have survived being slammed agains the suddenly-stopped cockpit wall; rockets don't fly in arcs (and don't do U-turns!) except near gravity wells, and then you have to match speeds to the orbital arc you want; leaping from a spinning surface in zero-G means the spin you had is imparted to your flight via conservation of rotational inertia. You couldn't jump straight down the axis of a longitudinally spinning ship without eventually hitting a wall due to radial velocity imparted from the floor UNLESS you jumped right on axis...

(Conservation of linear and rotational momentum are violated often... )

If you're falling in low G, touching a wall would impart outward force and send you away from the wall... jumping up to the ceiling in lowG doesn't mean you hit with a thump and stay there... unless you grab a handhold you'll bounce off with almost as much velocity as you hit...
You might say, who cares? We ignore Star Trek creating new "bands" of radiation at every turn... but all these things add up since so much of the storyline depends on these antics...if you're a hard sciences purist anyway.

But read it! It's gripping and fun, even with information withheld by the protagonist. The ending was suspenseful and not totally predictable. Had me going there.

I've always been picky that way... as an engineering physics major. I love Star Trek, Star Wars, everything, but you don't want to watch it with me because I nitpick every physics mistake!

A good read; I'll read the sequel. Overall, a high recommendation. As Mike Resnick said, "a very impressive first novel."

Rating:
Summary: Don't miss this one
Review: I can't believe this book is not selling better. Somehow word of mouth is just not getting out. This is a great story. It's fun, exciting, and everything you want in an SF novel. The mystery part keeps it moving, the characters are fully developed and interesting. Do yourself a favor and buy this book. It's a great read and I can't wait for whatever Ty Drago comes up with next.

Rating:
Summary: A Classing Space Saga
Review: In the classic style of Asimov and EE "Doc" Smith, Ty Drago creates a rich future filled with strong personalities, grand schemes and deadly conflicts. With a fast start, we are dragged into situations of grave danger, and follow our hero as he faces off against defiant rebels, overbearing global corporations, and meglomaniacs aplenty. While we fit together many of the pieces ahead of time, there remains surprises up to the end.

A great story, from start to finish, with characters of impressive depth. I can't wait for more adventures of Lieutenant Brogue and the Hammers.

Rating:
Summary: A Classing Space Saga
Review: In the classic style of Asimov and EE "Doc" Smith, Ty Drago creates a rich future filled with strong personalities, grand schemes and deadly conflicts. With a fast start, we are dragged into situations of grave danger, and follow our hero as he faces off against defiant rebels, overbearing global corporations, and meglomaniacs aplenty. While we fit together many of the pieces ahead of time, there remains surprises up to the end.

A great story, from start to finish, with characters of impressive depth. I can't wait for more adventures of Lieutenant Brogue and the Hammers.

Rating:
Summary: Strange world, strange case
Review: The biggest mystery in Phobos may not be the case Peace Corps lieutenant Mike Brogue is sent to solve, but the universe in which Phobos is set. Some of the backstory is filled in, but many questions remain unanswered (at least for now--the ending suggests a sequel).

The mystery itself is an engaging one, reminiscent of another debut novel, Matthew Delaney's Jinn. While that novel used writing gimmicks to create shocks (such as withholding necessary information), this one doesn't. If anything, the book reminded me of an episode of "Scooby-Doo" (and this is a compliment): before long it is clear that there *is* a rational explanation for everything that's happened; it's up to Brogue et al. to find it.

The book moves along at a fair clip, with enough suspense and intrigue to carry you through to the last pages. If Drago writes a sequel, I'll definitely read it.

Rating:
Summary: reminiscent of Sean Connery?s Outland
Review: There is bad blood between the earthlings and their Martian colonists so the promotion of the first Martian to a Peacekeeper officer job may be a token action, but one heck of a large token. However, Lieutenant Mike Brogue does not wish to be the Jackie Robinson of peacekeepers; he just wants to do his job and help change a broken system from within.

Mike resolved a potentially nasty situation when Freedom fighters held a mayor hostage with enough dynamite to place the city at risk if an assault occurred. Following that success, Mike travels to the Martian moon Phobos where the Agraria Research Station is under attack by a serial killer somehow residing beneath the surface dust. Mike takes command of hostile earth born Peacekeeper soldiers who resent a Martian in charge. He makes inquiries and learns that the station has made incredible leaps in nanotechnology including developing a deadly artificial life form that someone controls as a killing machine. However, Mike is not any closer to determining who would use murder to drive everyone off the moon or why?

PHOBOS is a great police procedural science fiction tale that that hooks the audience from the moment Mike works the mayoral abduction case until he completes the dangerous moon probe. The story line works for both genres as Mars and Phobos feel genuinely colonized and in dispute with the mother planet while the investigation seeks to uncover the villain behind the homicides. The key cast members whether they are from earth or Mars are fully devolved so that the audience receives a great tale reminiscent of Sean Connery's Outland.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: reminiscent of Sean Connery¿s Outland
Review: There is bad blood between the earthlings and their Martian colonists so the promotion of the first Martian to a Peacekeeper officer job may be a token action, but one heck of a large token. However, Lieutenant Mike Brogue does not wish to be the Jackie Robinson of peacekeepers; he just wants to do his job and help change a broken system from within.

Mike resolved a potentially nasty situation when Freedom fighters held a mayor hostage with enough dynamite to place the city at risk if an assault occurred. Following that success, Mike travels to the Martian moon Phobos where the Agraria Research Station is under attack by a serial killer somehow residing beneath the surface dust. Mike takes command of hostile earth born Peacekeeper soldiers who resent a Martian in charge. He makes inquiries and learns that the station has made incredible leaps in nanotechnology including developing a deadly artificial life form that someone controls as a killing machine. However, Mike is not any closer to determining who would use murder to drive everyone off the moon or why?

PHOBOS is a great police procedural science fiction tale that that hooks the audience from the moment Mike works the mayoral abduction case until he completes the dangerous moon probe. The story line works for both genres as Mars and Phobos feel genuinely colonized and in dispute with the mother planet while the investigation seeks to uncover the villain behind the homicides. The key cast members whether they are from earth or Mars are fully devolved so that the audience receives a great tale reminiscent of Sean Connery's Outland.

Harriet Klausner