Disclaimer: This review is provided as part of a mutual review agreement.
I’m twenty-one chapter into The Bastard Cadre, and I don’t know what’s going on, but I sure don’t mind sticking around to find out.
The Good: Most of it. It’s very rare I offer anything a 4-star, but this one deserves it. Tight action, interesting mysteries, decent dialogue, and a plot that lights a fuse on the rocket in act one and doesn’t feel ready to let off the throttle yet.
The Bad: The opening two chapters are a little precious and over-written, particularly in dialogue. There’s the rare typo I noticed.
The Ugly: Nothing to complain about here. The site is super-simple and clean in design. Nothing distracts from the words.
The Bastard Cadre opens preciously close to "in media res", and plays out from there. A mind-reader falls in with a band of mercenary bounty hunters, while separately an old spy(?) wanders the desert with a hacking prodigy, a child not his own that he nevertheless raised.
The plot kicks off with a bounty for an arrest succeeding, while an old man in the desert turns out to be far more than he seems. Almost immediately we’re into tense, driving action, with a lot of details about the world and the complex factions flying by.
There are scenes fraught with well-written violence, fast-acting and leaving tight, clean impressions on the reader’s mind. Nothing seems extraneous to the story, and everything feels poised with momentum barreling forward.
4 stars out of 5
Disclaimer: This review is provided as part of a mutual review agreement.
I’m twenty-one chapter into The Bastard Cadre, and I don’t know what’s going on, but I sure don’t mind sticking around to find out.
The Good: Most of it. It’s very rare I offer anything a 4-star, but this one deserves it. Tight action, interesting mysteries, decent dialogue, and a plot that lights a fuse on the rocket in act one and doesn’t feel ready to let off the throttle yet.
The Bad: The opening two chapters are a little precious and over-written, particularly in dialogue. There’s the rare typo I noticed.
The Ugly: Nothing to complain about here. The site is super-simple and clean in design. Nothing distracts from the words.
The Bastard Cadre opens preciously close to "in media res", and plays out from there. A mind-reader falls in with a band of mercenary bounty hunters, while separately an old spy(?) wanders the desert with a hacking prodigy, a child not his own that he nevertheless raised.
The plot kicks off with a bounty for an arrest succeeding, while an old man in the desert turns out to be far more than he seems. Almost immediately we’re into tense, driving action, with a lot of details about the world and the complex factions flying by.
There are scenes fraught with well-written violence, fast-acting and leaving tight, clean impressions on the reader’s mind. Nothing seems extraneous to the story, and everything feels poised with momentum barreling forward.