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Title: The Fortress in Orion
Series: Dead Enders #1
Author: Mike Resnick
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SFF
Pages: 306
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
Nathan Pretorias, a secret agent for the Democracy, has returned from yet another impossible mission. Well, parts of him returned. Now he has been tagged to carry out a truly impossible mission:
replace the war chief Michtag, the universal dictator of the aliens fighting humanity with a clone raised by humans and trained
Nathan assembles his own team of specialists, all misfits in one way or another. They make their way to the super secret fortress on the super secret planet deep in the Coalition. They kidnap and replace General Michtag and successfully make their way back to the Democracy.
Where Nathan’s superior presents yet another impossible mission, a mission only the Dead Enders can take on.
| My Thoughts: |
While I absolutely loved Santiago and the Widowmaker series, this reminded much more of the Starship series. Space Opera at its most mediocre. There simply wasn’t any tension. While Resnick excels at telling a myth style story set in the future, he’s not so good at just telling a character story.
For an impossible fortress and impossible mission, everything went off without a hitch. No matter how good your team is, something is going to go wrong and everything is going to be flubbed up. That just didn’t happen here and so like I said, there was zero tension. If there had been a lot of action or something else, even that could be gotten past, but there really wasn’t much else.
Resnick seems to be very hit or miss for me and I have a feeling this Dead Enders trilogy is going to be a miss. I hope I am proved wrong, but I’m very much getting the same vibe from this book that I got from the middle Starship book. That does not bode well. I’m still giving this 3stars for the newness of the story but if the second book is just as blasé, I’ll be dropping the rating accordingly.
★★★☆☆
Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road 
What a pity this wasn’t what you hoped for. I hate it when that happens.
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I am REALLY hoping the next book is better. This is only a trilogy, so if I dnf the series with the next book at least I won’t have regrets 🙂
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I do enjoy a good Space Opera. I’ll have to take a look at Resnick’s other work, maybe Santiago. Thanks for the (round-about) rec! 🙂
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I highly recommend Santiago as a “best of” for Resnick…
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I find I haven’t been able to get into a space opera since the Deathstalker series.
I’ll keep this off my list of possibles. Currently listening to Black Ocean (85 hours long) so hoping that fills my sci-fi needs.
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Deathstalker, bleh. I gave up partway through, just couldn’t handle it.
The thing is, most of the time I like Space Opera, just didn’t work out so well this time…
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I read Deathstalker when I was a teen. Tried reading it recently and struggled to get on with it. Maybe I’ve outgrown it.
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I suspect so. I can see myself having loved it as a teen. Now though, it couldn’t hold my interest.
Funny how things like that work, eh? 😀
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Pretoria is a concidered the adminstrative capital of SA… wonder if the author knows about it or where he decided on that name…
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Honestly, I figured it was more based on the Praetorian Guard from old Roman times. The whole warrior ethos thing…
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Makes more sence than Pretoria being the capital…
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I wouldn’t be surprised if he named the character after Andries Pretorius, the guy that the city was named after.
Resnick spent some time in Kenya, and has written some Kenyan-themed novels, so I’m guessing he knows a lot more African history than the average American.
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Never knew that. This is why i like WP, learning new stuff everyday
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