What do you think?
Rate this book
A Fury of Aces #1
Burnt Ice
Move over Star Wars! This is a superb space opera. Humans and hybrids and strange new creatures fight for survival on Earth and across the galaxies.
A superb space adventure from a fresh new voice. In our future worlds the Administration rules the Sphere of Humankind, the Games Board sanctions and funds wars and conflicts, and the Haulers' Collective roams the space routes like the caravanners of old. Marko and his crew of fellow soldier-engineers are sent to investigate an unknown planet. When they encounter strange artefacts and an intelligent but aggressive squid species, they are forced to embark on a perilous journey far from the Sphere. they will have to survive not only other alien encounters but also their own Administration's deadly manipulations. Political factions and galactic media moguls vie for power ... and money.
A superb space adventure from a fresh new voice. In our future worlds the Administration rules the Sphere of Humankind, the Games Board sanctions and funds wars and conflicts, and the Haulers' Collective roams the space routes like the caravanners of old. Marko and his crew of fellow soldier-engineers are sent to investigate an unknown planet. When they encounter strange artefacts and an intelligent but aggressive squid species, they are forced to embark on a perilous journey far from the Sphere. they will have to survive not only other alien encounters but also their own Administration's deadly manipulations. Political factions and galactic media moguls vie for power ... and money.
432 pages
First published January 1, 2012
8 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 20, 2012
I gave up after the first chapter, the author has a tin ear for dialogue, I can't understand how this got past an editor. First book I've given up in in a decade or more.
July 24, 2017
There was definitely a decent idea behind this book, but sadly the execution was somewhat lacking. There never felt any urgency to the plot, and the writing itself was stilted and difficult to get through, with at times some strange points of focus. Dialogue was particularly poor - characters referred to each other's names with almost every spoken line, and massive amounts of exposition was dumped into speech. Plenty of "As you knows" showed their head as well.
Ultimately, this could have been a good book, but sadly is not.
Ultimately, this could have been a good book, but sadly is not.
May 2, 2018
Great idea but an odd read. The writing makes it difficult to appreciate so is talking and paragraphing seems haphazard rather than organised. I eventually worked out that it read like a comic with occasional descriptive passage thrown in to compensate for the lack of pictures. Will read the next one to see if the editing and structure improves. Good idea for a story but poorly executed.
July 20, 2023
Great story line, easy reading with almost believable characters and AIs qho think fast and use their genius to keep moving and making money from political factions as well as media moguls. Great Space Adventure!
December 14, 2024
I keep getting this out from the library, reading the first chapter and realizing I don't enjoy it. Yet somehow I keep picking it up without clicking that it's this?
Just don't love the way it's written.
Just don't love the way it's written.
April 22, 2012
Burnt Ice, the first in the A Fury of Aces series, is Steve Wheeler’s debut novel. I was really excited to read a new ANZ science fiction novel since there are so few of them being published, especially by large publishers (this one is from Harper Voyager, if you’re wondering). And it has such a lovely cover, too (so much SF coming out of the US has unappealing covers with artwork ruined, in my opinion, by unpleasant typography).
When I picked up Burnt Ice, I was expecting something like a Sean Williams and/or Shane Dix novel, but that wasn’t what I got.
Burnt Ice follows the adventures and misadventures of a military engineering crew in a distant future where wars are called “conflicts” and are sanctioned by the ever-watching Games Board. Of course, only part of the story revolves around the Games Board. The novel is actually structured as four almost self-contained stories with different but related missions at their centre. The over-arching plot holds everything together, even if at times it’s not obvious how the current conflict connects.
The plot was solid and fast-paced without a dull moment. New dangers kept arising and the crew’s missions took them to interesting places. The world building was also fairly strong, especially the planet at the start, which I enjoyed reading about. I also liked that there were aliens they didn’t know much about that popped up to cause trouble every now and then.
The writing was heavy on the technobabble, which I didn’t mind, although at times every new procedure was described in a bit too much technical detail. It didn’t bother me at first, but it got a bit much towards the end. On the other hand, the science and pseudoscience didn’t make me angry with it’s lack of credibility (as in, it was mostly correct and at least semi-viable), so that’s always a plus.
There were some things that did bother me, however. The characters were not very well developed and, especially in the first half or so when the focus was on the core crew, it wasn’t that easy to distinguish between them. The characters that stood out were basically Marko, the mainest character, Fritz, The Oddball Genius, and Jan, The (Mysterious) Girl. The other two crew members didn’t read terribly differently to Marko. Very little time was spent developing the personalities and relationships between them to the point where, for example, we’re told when there’s a romantic connection but no reason is really given for it and I was left wondering why those two would even want to hook up. The characters that came along later on were more distinct and interesting, but they weren’t further developed either. It would have been a stronger novel if some of the technobabble were exchanged for some character development.
Easily my favourite character was the sentient ACE (Artificially Created Entity) soft-of-pet Marko built for himself in the latter half of the book. Basically an animal cyborg, it’s quirky lack of understanding of human idioms gave me a couple of laughs. It wouldn’t really have meshed with the plot earlier on, but I do wish it had come along sooner.
The other thing that bothered me was the unnecessary (and I assume unconscious) use of gendered slurs. For example “arrogant woman/bitch” was used two too many times. In an ostensibly gender-equal world, it felt like everyone who screwed up and more than half the dodgy people (as in bad guys, but there were shades of grey and mystery to some of them) were female or AIs. I was particularly offended when someone called the suddenly rogue AI a f*cking bitch (the swearing I don’t object to because the AI was trying to kill them). Even though the AIs were loosely gendered, you can’t get much more asexual than a computer so you’d think notions of gender would have been redefined by that distant future point. As I said, I very much doubt it was intentional sexism, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t bother me.
The ending was very much an ending to part one in a series. There were a lot of unanswered questions, including some mysterious new characters who showed up towards the end and promised (the reader, not so much the other characters, which isn’t a bad thing) some answers as well as more interesting questions. If the characterisation hadn’t bothered me so much I would be interested in reading what happens next. As is, I’m not sure that I will be picking up the next in the (possibly ten book long) series.
3 / 5 stars
When I picked up Burnt Ice, I was expecting something like a Sean Williams and/or Shane Dix novel, but that wasn’t what I got.
Burnt Ice follows the adventures and misadventures of a military engineering crew in a distant future where wars are called “conflicts” and are sanctioned by the ever-watching Games Board. Of course, only part of the story revolves around the Games Board. The novel is actually structured as four almost self-contained stories with different but related missions at their centre. The over-arching plot holds everything together, even if at times it’s not obvious how the current conflict connects.
The plot was solid and fast-paced without a dull moment. New dangers kept arising and the crew’s missions took them to interesting places. The world building was also fairly strong, especially the planet at the start, which I enjoyed reading about. I also liked that there were aliens they didn’t know much about that popped up to cause trouble every now and then.
The writing was heavy on the technobabble, which I didn’t mind, although at times every new procedure was described in a bit too much technical detail. It didn’t bother me at first, but it got a bit much towards the end. On the other hand, the science and pseudoscience didn’t make me angry with it’s lack of credibility (as in, it was mostly correct and at least semi-viable), so that’s always a plus.
There were some things that did bother me, however. The characters were not very well developed and, especially in the first half or so when the focus was on the core crew, it wasn’t that easy to distinguish between them. The characters that stood out were basically Marko, the mainest character, Fritz, The Oddball Genius, and Jan, The (Mysterious) Girl. The other two crew members didn’t read terribly differently to Marko. Very little time was spent developing the personalities and relationships between them to the point where, for example, we’re told when there’s a romantic connection but no reason is really given for it and I was left wondering why those two would even want to hook up. The characters that came along later on were more distinct and interesting, but they weren’t further developed either. It would have been a stronger novel if some of the technobabble were exchanged for some character development.
Easily my favourite character was the sentient ACE (Artificially Created Entity) soft-of-pet Marko built for himself in the latter half of the book. Basically an animal cyborg, it’s quirky lack of understanding of human idioms gave me a couple of laughs. It wouldn’t really have meshed with the plot earlier on, but I do wish it had come along sooner.
The other thing that bothered me was the unnecessary (and I assume unconscious) use of gendered slurs. For example “arrogant woman/bitch” was used two too many times. In an ostensibly gender-equal world, it felt like everyone who screwed up and more than half the dodgy people (as in bad guys, but there were shades of grey and mystery to some of them) were female or AIs. I was particularly offended when someone called the suddenly rogue AI a f*cking bitch (the swearing I don’t object to because the AI was trying to kill them). Even though the AIs were loosely gendered, you can’t get much more asexual than a computer so you’d think notions of gender would have been redefined by that distant future point. As I said, I very much doubt it was intentional sexism, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t bother me.
The ending was very much an ending to part one in a series. There were a lot of unanswered questions, including some mysterious new characters who showed up towards the end and promised (the reader, not so much the other characters, which isn’t a bad thing) some answers as well as more interesting questions. If the characterisation hadn’t bothered me so much I would be interested in reading what happens next. As is, I’m not sure that I will be picking up the next in the (possibly ten book long) series.
3 / 5 stars
June 22, 2014
Rebecca Muir reviewed this book; for more reviews by Bec, see Rebecca Muir on Dark Matter Zine. To see all reviews on Dark Matter Zine, go to Dark Matter Zine's reviews.
Burnt Ice is the first book in Steve Wheeler’s A Fury of Aces series. It follows the adventures of Marko Spitz, a sergeant in the Administration’s military in the distant future of humanity. Marko and his team of military engineers are a special group used by the Administration (who rule the Sphere of Humanity) when there are problems with technology to be solved and cleaned up quietly. They are a team of elites, all with special skills.
As Burnt Ice opens, the team is being dropped onto the planet Cygnus 5, supposedly for some rest and relaxation. However, things change when a previously undiscovered race of sentient squid attack the base. This propels Marko and the team into a series of adventures which will take them outside the Sphere of Humanity and pit them against unknown enemies.
I’m not quite sure whether to give Burnt Ice a good review or not. Steve Wheeler has given his imagination free rein, and come up with a big picture of the future of humanity – one in which humans travel among the stars, can manipulate their own genetics to augment themselves and have discovered a technological method of immortality. It is a future in which the line between natural life and artificial life has been well and truly blurred. I’ve always enjoyed this particular subset of science fiction – the interstellar, technologically advanced humanity subset.
However, Burnt Ice had some flaws as well. For one thing, the true nature of most of the characters remains hidden – they are almost uniformly portrayed as having some kind of secret or another in their past or in their very existence. Steve Wheeler goes a bit over the top in creating shadows around his characters, none of which are really cleared away. I suppose he is setting up the next few books but it makes this one a bit frustrating – it is hard to get a handle on who some of the characters really are.
Another thing which I felt let the book down is the way Steve Wheeler is almost a bit greedy for Marko and the team in terms of technology. They fly a new ship with some whiz bang features and suddenly it is gifted to them. They develop a new technology, and suddenly they are wealthy from the profits. Their ship ends up with all sorts of convenient modifications that no one else in the universe seems to have been able to do. It is almost like watching a kid in a lolly shop.
The other main flaw I felt the book had was in the use of technology – there are some problems which the crew face for which they quickly come up with a solution but it almost seems too easy. I felt like Burnt Ice was heading towards inconsistency – there are other problems, which for the sake of the plot had to be a bit more difficult, but if problems A and B were so easy for these engineering geniuses to solve, why is problem C so hard?
Having been so negative, I did mostly enjoy reading the book. There is a fair bit of action (even though some of it seems random and unconnected – again, some things are left deliberately vague) and some interesting ideas. However, Burnt Ice misses its potential. There could have been so much more character exploration instead of innuendo and intrigue. There are issues that could have been explored so much more – issues about what humanity actually is, and what life actually is, issues about what ends justify what means and issues about loyalty and trust. However, the book only skims across the surface of these. Burnt Ice is a book I enjoyed reading but not one which I expect to keep on coming back to, to read or to ponder.
Burnt Ice is the first book in Steve Wheeler’s A Fury of Aces series. It follows the adventures of Marko Spitz, a sergeant in the Administration’s military in the distant future of humanity. Marko and his team of military engineers are a special group used by the Administration (who rule the Sphere of Humanity) when there are problems with technology to be solved and cleaned up quietly. They are a team of elites, all with special skills.
As Burnt Ice opens, the team is being dropped onto the planet Cygnus 5, supposedly for some rest and relaxation. However, things change when a previously undiscovered race of sentient squid attack the base. This propels Marko and the team into a series of adventures which will take them outside the Sphere of Humanity and pit them against unknown enemies.
I’m not quite sure whether to give Burnt Ice a good review or not. Steve Wheeler has given his imagination free rein, and come up with a big picture of the future of humanity – one in which humans travel among the stars, can manipulate their own genetics to augment themselves and have discovered a technological method of immortality. It is a future in which the line between natural life and artificial life has been well and truly blurred. I’ve always enjoyed this particular subset of science fiction – the interstellar, technologically advanced humanity subset.
However, Burnt Ice had some flaws as well. For one thing, the true nature of most of the characters remains hidden – they are almost uniformly portrayed as having some kind of secret or another in their past or in their very existence. Steve Wheeler goes a bit over the top in creating shadows around his characters, none of which are really cleared away. I suppose he is setting up the next few books but it makes this one a bit frustrating – it is hard to get a handle on who some of the characters really are.
Another thing which I felt let the book down is the way Steve Wheeler is almost a bit greedy for Marko and the team in terms of technology. They fly a new ship with some whiz bang features and suddenly it is gifted to them. They develop a new technology, and suddenly they are wealthy from the profits. Their ship ends up with all sorts of convenient modifications that no one else in the universe seems to have been able to do. It is almost like watching a kid in a lolly shop.
The other main flaw I felt the book had was in the use of technology – there are some problems which the crew face for which they quickly come up with a solution but it almost seems too easy. I felt like Burnt Ice was heading towards inconsistency – there are other problems, which for the sake of the plot had to be a bit more difficult, but if problems A and B were so easy for these engineering geniuses to solve, why is problem C so hard?
Having been so negative, I did mostly enjoy reading the book. There is a fair bit of action (even though some of it seems random and unconnected – again, some things are left deliberately vague) and some interesting ideas. However, Burnt Ice misses its potential. There could have been so much more character exploration instead of innuendo and intrigue. There are issues that could have been explored so much more – issues about what humanity actually is, and what life actually is, issues about what ends justify what means and issues about loyalty and trust. However, the book only skims across the surface of these. Burnt Ice is a book I enjoyed reading but not one which I expect to keep on coming back to, to read or to ponder.
April 16, 2012
The best place to start with Burnt Ice for me, would be the end; It was a chore to get there.
I was looking forward to this book as it had an interesting premise and was written by a first time Author from just across the pond in New Zealand. It's been a while since I've seen some real Science Fiction in a novel, something that could give the classics a modern-day run for their money but unfortunately, Steve Wheeler's Burnt Ice doesn't come close. It fizzles in the first few pages and only goes downhill from there.
Burnt Ice is the first in the Fury of Aces series by Steve Wheeler. It tells the tale of Marko and his squad of soldier engineers as they investigate planets and battle alien squid across the Sphere of Humankind as all of their exploits are filmed and broadcast for the entertainment of the masses. The book reads like just about every Science Fiction or Space Fantasy story you've ever heard of mashed into a single entity.
The problem isn't simply with the story (or lack thereof), the story could have been something special in more adept hands. The biggest hurdle Burnt Ice struggles with is the writing which comes across amateurish. The kind of amateur-fiction you find around the internet where universes of no consequence are created and then populated with cliche and dull characters. The universe within Burnt Ice is indeed quite literally, without consequence; Our heroes are never in any real danger because if they are ever killed they can just be regrown through a DNA replicating technology called a Soul-Saver. You don't care about any of the situations they get into throughout the book because you know that in the end, no matter what occurs everyone will still be fine. Not that you would really care if they could die as each character is extremely one-dimensional and differ very little from one to the next.
Within the first page the author has already fallen into the literary faux pa of switching between the points of view of three separate characters with nary a paragraph break in site. It's hard enough to decipher which character is actually speaking their stilted, trite dialogue (that's punctuated by a completely unnecessary amount of cursing) let alone who's point of view the events are unfolding through. Colour me confused, I almost gave up reading by page five but somehow managed to keep enduring and am still wondering how this kind of thing got past the Editor in Chief.
Techno-babble is something of a staple within Science Fiction and Burnt Ice has more of it than Stephen Hawking and Captain Kirk combined can shake a stick at. Usually in a Science Fiction story, this would be something that holds my interest long after I've finished the actual story. Techno-babble is one of the main reasons I love Science Fiction as a genre but it has to have purpose. Throughout my entire experience with Burnt Ice, I was left confused by the science of it all. Again, it falls back to that feeling of reading someone's internet fiction. Pseudo-techno/science words stitched together and trying to come across as more intelligent than the actual nonsense that they are. I'm left with the impression that Mr. Wheeler believes himself to be more of a techno-wiz than he actually is.
SUPERB SPACE ADVENTURE FROM A FRESH NEW VOICE and MOVE OVER STAR WARS are the tag-lines on the book; I don't think George Lucas has got anything to worry about just yet as Burnt Ice is about as stale as it gets.
Well, at least the cover by the great John Howe is nice.
I was looking forward to this book as it had an interesting premise and was written by a first time Author from just across the pond in New Zealand. It's been a while since I've seen some real Science Fiction in a novel, something that could give the classics a modern-day run for their money but unfortunately, Steve Wheeler's Burnt Ice doesn't come close. It fizzles in the first few pages and only goes downhill from there.
Burnt Ice is the first in the Fury of Aces series by Steve Wheeler. It tells the tale of Marko and his squad of soldier engineers as they investigate planets and battle alien squid across the Sphere of Humankind as all of their exploits are filmed and broadcast for the entertainment of the masses. The book reads like just about every Science Fiction or Space Fantasy story you've ever heard of mashed into a single entity.
The problem isn't simply with the story (or lack thereof), the story could have been something special in more adept hands. The biggest hurdle Burnt Ice struggles with is the writing which comes across amateurish. The kind of amateur-fiction you find around the internet where universes of no consequence are created and then populated with cliche and dull characters. The universe within Burnt Ice is indeed quite literally, without consequence; Our heroes are never in any real danger because if they are ever killed they can just be regrown through a DNA replicating technology called a Soul-Saver. You don't care about any of the situations they get into throughout the book because you know that in the end, no matter what occurs everyone will still be fine. Not that you would really care if they could die as each character is extremely one-dimensional and differ very little from one to the next.
Within the first page the author has already fallen into the literary faux pa of switching between the points of view of three separate characters with nary a paragraph break in site. It's hard enough to decipher which character is actually speaking their stilted, trite dialogue (that's punctuated by a completely unnecessary amount of cursing) let alone who's point of view the events are unfolding through. Colour me confused, I almost gave up reading by page five but somehow managed to keep enduring and am still wondering how this kind of thing got past the Editor in Chief.
Techno-babble is something of a staple within Science Fiction and Burnt Ice has more of it than Stephen Hawking and Captain Kirk combined can shake a stick at. Usually in a Science Fiction story, this would be something that holds my interest long after I've finished the actual story. Techno-babble is one of the main reasons I love Science Fiction as a genre but it has to have purpose. Throughout my entire experience with Burnt Ice, I was left confused by the science of it all. Again, it falls back to that feeling of reading someone's internet fiction. Pseudo-techno/science words stitched together and trying to come across as more intelligent than the actual nonsense that they are. I'm left with the impression that Mr. Wheeler believes himself to be more of a techno-wiz than he actually is.
SUPERB SPACE ADVENTURE FROM A FRESH NEW VOICE and MOVE OVER STAR WARS are the tag-lines on the book; I don't think George Lucas has got anything to worry about just yet as Burnt Ice is about as stale as it gets.
Well, at least the cover by the great John Howe is nice.
April 10, 2012
Captain Michael Longbow and his crew of engineers, warriors and operatives are about to catch up on some recreation time on the resort world of Cygnus 5 when an investigation of some ancient underwater ruins turns into a full-scale battle. A series of missions takes them to different worlds to investigate alien tech and rogue Artificial Intelligences, during which the crew must work together and innovate to survive.
Burnt Ice reads a lot like a television series - four or five episodes with a variety of outcomes. The only problem with the story being separated into episodes is the sometimes drawn-out story building between each action sequence.
When the action does happen, it's fast paced and well-described. The heroes and their various bio-enhancements are pretty awesome in how they deal with situations, and it's all recorded for broadcast by the Games Board. No wonder they become celebrities!
This book contains a lot of technical descriptions - the team's every invention and creation are intricately described and I found I had to really pay attention to keep up sometimes. The creations themselves are amazing though - Artificial Created Entities created from the combined traits of various animals to make a pet with benefits? Awesome! Being able to upload yourself into a computer so that if you die, you can just grow yourself a new body? How useful! There are a huge variety of other interesting inventions and advancements that the crew of the Basalt have at their disposal.
The members of Captain Longbow's crew are likeable enough and they all have secrets that are hinted at, but not revealed. Emotional range is a little limited but that's made up for by general bad-assery. The fact that they use Aussie/Kiwi vernacular such as "mate", "have a yarn", "bugger!" and other local phrases means that the whole story felt like a very local production. This is by no means a bad thing, just different!
If a Space Opera with plenty of battles interspersed with high-tech wizardry sounds appealing to you, Burnt Ice is worth a read! I'll be watching out for the future of this series.
Warnings: Strong language and sexual references. Not as G-rated as Star Wars.
Review originally posted April 10 2012 on The Oaken Bookcase.
Burnt Ice reads a lot like a television series - four or five episodes with a variety of outcomes. The only problem with the story being separated into episodes is the sometimes drawn-out story building between each action sequence.
When the action does happen, it's fast paced and well-described. The heroes and their various bio-enhancements are pretty awesome in how they deal with situations, and it's all recorded for broadcast by the Games Board. No wonder they become celebrities!
This book contains a lot of technical descriptions - the team's every invention and creation are intricately described and I found I had to really pay attention to keep up sometimes. The creations themselves are amazing though - Artificial Created Entities created from the combined traits of various animals to make a pet with benefits? Awesome! Being able to upload yourself into a computer so that if you die, you can just grow yourself a new body? How useful! There are a huge variety of other interesting inventions and advancements that the crew of the Basalt have at their disposal.
The members of Captain Longbow's crew are likeable enough and they all have secrets that are hinted at, but not revealed. Emotional range is a little limited but that's made up for by general bad-assery. The fact that they use Aussie/Kiwi vernacular such as "mate", "have a yarn", "bugger!" and other local phrases means that the whole story felt like a very local production. This is by no means a bad thing, just different!
If a Space Opera with plenty of battles interspersed with high-tech wizardry sounds appealing to you, Burnt Ice is worth a read! I'll be watching out for the future of this series.
Warnings: Strong language and sexual references. Not as G-rated as Star Wars.
Review originally posted April 10 2012 on The Oaken Bookcase.
November 20, 2013
I really wanted to like this book. The cover art is great, the author is from New Zealand, and the synopsis makes the story sound reasonable. But I couldn't finish this book, putting it back on the shelf at the 25% mark.
This is not a case of me not liking the story, characters or setting - they were well constructed for the most part. This is a case of poorly executed technical skills which stopped me from being able to read this book with any sort of fluency. Sentences were awkwardly constructed. There was no flow. There was no logical construction of paragraphs - they were just a collection of sentences rather than a coherent chunk of thought. The dialogue was very weak, never sounding natural at any point, and written with zero personality - I would not be able to tell who said what without dialogue tags. The technical language and jargon was probably the weakest aspect, making this book very inaccessible(and I'm a military engineer used to dealing with unfamiliar technical language and jargon on a daily basis).
I expect more from a publishing house like Harper Collins. When I dont like a book from a publishing house it usually a matter of taste - either I didn't connect with the characters or the story didn't interest me. This was not the case for Burnt Ice - I couldn't read this book because it was technically too flawed. I have no doubt that Mr Wheeler will continue to tell interesting stories in the future, but he will need to polish his writing skills before I consider reading one of his stories again.
This is not a case of me not liking the story, characters or setting - they were well constructed for the most part. This is a case of poorly executed technical skills which stopped me from being able to read this book with any sort of fluency. Sentences were awkwardly constructed. There was no flow. There was no logical construction of paragraphs - they were just a collection of sentences rather than a coherent chunk of thought. The dialogue was very weak, never sounding natural at any point, and written with zero personality - I would not be able to tell who said what without dialogue tags. The technical language and jargon was probably the weakest aspect, making this book very inaccessible(and I'm a military engineer used to dealing with unfamiliar technical language and jargon on a daily basis).
I expect more from a publishing house like Harper Collins. When I dont like a book from a publishing house it usually a matter of taste - either I didn't connect with the characters or the story didn't interest me. This was not the case for Burnt Ice - I couldn't read this book because it was technically too flawed. I have no doubt that Mr Wheeler will continue to tell interesting stories in the future, but he will need to polish his writing skills before I consider reading one of his stories again.
November 1, 2019
This book was so abysmally bad I could not make it past the first few dozen pages.
My chief criticism is that the dialogue was painfully awkward and in no way reflected the speech patterns of how people actually speak. I cringed with each sentence I read. Popular sci-fi today is fast-paced, gritty and dirty and Burnt Ice is none of those things. the characters actually use the term 'bedding' to refer to sleeping with someone (I'll stick to Richard K. Morgan for an example of someone who can write the kind of sci-fi I enjoy). I understand if the author doesn't want to use bad language but could have come up with something a hell of a lot better. The world is too clean to be enjoyable.
The female characters were terrible Mary Sues. In fact, all of the characters lacked any sort of spark or hook to draw me towards them.
I'm really not sure how books like this get published, most of the fanfiction I read is far superior to this. I invented my wtf is this s**t shelf especially for this book.
My chief criticism is that the dialogue was painfully awkward and in no way reflected the speech patterns of how people actually speak. I cringed with each sentence I read. Popular sci-fi today is fast-paced, gritty and dirty and Burnt Ice is none of those things. the characters actually use the term 'bedding' to refer to sleeping with someone (I'll stick to Richard K. Morgan for an example of someone who can write the kind of sci-fi I enjoy). I understand if the author doesn't want to use bad language but could have come up with something a hell of a lot better. The world is too clean to be enjoyable.
The female characters were terrible Mary Sues. In fact, all of the characters lacked any sort of spark or hook to draw me towards them.
I'm really not sure how books like this get published, most of the fanfiction I read is far superior to this. I invented my wtf is this s**t shelf especially for this book.
February 7, 2015
Interesting story but a little scattered for my liking. Seems like it was written in bullet form and then the bullets were removed and made into one long story.
The use of one person conversations left a lot for the reader to try to figure out what happened to get to this point and wondering who the character was talking to or about. This lead to a fast pace conversation that left my mind reeling after a while.
Not enough depth to the characters initially left me wondering who was who and where their part of the story started and/or finished and that took a lot to get into the story. It wasn't till the very end of the book that I was finally warming up to the characters and then it was over.
As a sci fi lover it's book that I would read if I did not have any others available at the time.
The use of one person conversations left a lot for the reader to try to figure out what happened to get to this point and wondering who the character was talking to or about. This lead to a fast pace conversation that left my mind reeling after a while.
Not enough depth to the characters initially left me wondering who was who and where their part of the story started and/or finished and that took a lot to get into the story. It wasn't till the very end of the book that I was finally warming up to the characters and then it was over.
As a sci fi lover it's book that I would read if I did not have any others available at the time.
December 31, 2015
I was intrigued by the title of this one and downloaded it during a spree of free e-book searches. But it was a struggle to engage with the story, or the series of stories really. The point of view transitions drastically and the characters felt vague. I get what the aim was, a rag tag bunch are thrown together and have to manage their way through the various assignments they're given. Of course they end up interacting with various alien entities, and playing with their own tech, mainly AI, but these never crystallized in my mind with any sense of being plausible. And the glossary for the various acronyms, like Artificial Intelligence, comes too late to be useful making them another source of vagueness. The first of a series but I won't be reading the next in a hurry.
May 31, 2015
This had all the elements of a great space opera. The author has done a great job of creating a universe occupied by interesting characters and intriguing ideas. Handled well this could have been one of the great books of its time. Unfortunately it was let down by the writing style. The first chapters in particular were very choppy and rushed. The author never completely relaxes into telling the story and the tone of the story is rushed, like an excited child trying to tell us everything at once. The plot feels erratic and glimpses into the future of the story are handled in a very obvious way. The ideas are great but writing style needs serious improvement.
May 2, 2016
It's hard to remember another book I've given up on so fast. Interesting ideas, but so very, very poorly expressed. The dialogue strains to sound informal but fails, the inner monologues are worse, and the exposition is clumsy and laboured. (I suspect that there are also pacing problems, but since I gave up half way through chapter two, I can't say that for sure. It just feels like there will be.) In short, this is a book for lying down and avoiding, and since it's the first in a trilogy, its sequels probably are too.
July 17, 2016
Perfect science fiction. Intriguing characters, story and universe. The characters have a strength and a depth to them and an aura of mystery and intrigue surrounds them.
I particularly enjoyed the ACEs. Artificially created entity - specifically a cat, a dog and a spider. They're sentient and intelligent and get up to all kinds of mischief.
Most definitely recommend. I will be getting more from this author now. My curiosity has me wondering just what this group of humans, and the not so human, will be doing for their next adventures.
I particularly enjoyed the ACEs. Artificially created entity - specifically a cat, a dog and a spider. They're sentient and intelligent and get up to all kinds of mischief.
Most definitely recommend. I will be getting more from this author now. My curiosity has me wondering just what this group of humans, and the not so human, will be doing for their next adventures.
January 11, 2015
Hmm... There was a lot about this book that I liked and a lot I wanted to have added. It had quite a bit of technical detail, but not as much character depth, which would have made it really good. Great story, had me a little lost at times but by the end of it, I considered getting the next once since I did finally get to know the characters a bit better.
September 8, 2012
Good fun read! Fast paced and enjoyable, reads like a SF show, not for people who like literary classics or deep character development. Builds an interesting universe, I want to find out what happens next.
June 4, 2014
I liked the ACE's, (Artificially Created Entities). Part biological, part AI and grown in a tank. All sorts of travel improvements and some mighty weapons made for a fast moving and interesting romp.
January 20, 2017
interesting series, lots of new concepts, very twisted view of humanities future
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews