The second one (Shadow of the Xel'naga) I'm about half way through... it's got some good points but the author's got some of the characters wrong...so very wrong. He describes Kerrigan as someone that looks over all the swarms with motherly affection, he even has her stroking one of the zerglings in the primary hive cluster on char, which it responds similar to how any pet would. (For those that haven't played Starcraft, Kerrigan eats random Zerg creatures to regain energy, also she hates Acturus for abandoning her and refers to her current existance as her own personal hell.)
Duke's character again is just totally wrong. First one of his officers turns around and asks him when they're going to try and overthrow Arcturus. (Hey dumbass, when there's just been a change of government, asking the person that was primary responsible for helping it happen when it's going to change back probably isn't the brightest thing to do.) Now, Duke responds with a reprimand and simply tells him that the job of any military is to serve their government, whichever government that may be. (no wonder the coup was so easy, it seems as though the first one to say "I'm the Emperor!" gets immediate support of the military, but then again General Duke doesn't seem to be particularly worried that there's a dissenter in the bridge crew of his flagship.)
Next is the combat, the author does a good job in describing what you'd expect any Starcraftian combat to be like, which in itself is part of the problem. The first novel used reasonably beleivable "real-world" mechanics in what was happening. The tactics weren't good but the situations were beleivable, the Zerg appear on a world, start spreading across the planet, Terrans send in some militia to try and keep them out of certain areas, then the Protoss show up and BDZ the place. The author of the second novel however has decided that gameplay mechanics would be best suited. As a result the zerg show up with a large force then instead of washing over the colony like you'd expect them to, they start pissing around with establishing hive clusters and infesting the various outposts so they can have infested Terrans, then the Protoss arrive with a large fleet, the battle in space but send a landing party which then starts harvesting resources so they can build reavers and various other things (WTF!?).
Then the Terrans arrive, they pick up the Pross and the Zerg signals "They've formed an alliance!" Duke declares (I don't remember him being this much of an imbecile in the game), his dissenting tactical officer then reports that they're shooting at each other. Rather then wait for the Protoss and Zerg to finish each other off General Duke orders the entire strikeforce to attack. His dissenting tactical officer advises him to wait for them to gather more data on the situation before engaging but is quickly dismissed "when have you ever known me to sit around and wait for data when it's time for action!"
The Terrans engage firing their Yamato cannons into the swarms and at the Protoss, managing to draw the attention of both the Zerg and the Protoss causing them to have to fight them both at once. Nice job guys.
Just out of curiosity I turned to the "about the author" page.
For some reason I expected the next page to say "Gotcha!"Gabriel Mesta is a pseudonym for the husband-and-wife team of KEVIN J ANDERSON and REBECCA MOESTA.
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