Star Force: Ambrosia

Star Force: Phase 1 - The Origin Series #6

by Aer-ki Jyr

With their basic training completed, the former trainees are given additional responsibilities and exposed to new secrets about their enemy, their future, and the origins of the Black Knight.

"Ambrosia" is the 6th episode in the series.

Word Count: 22,500

Genres: Science Fiction, Military Fiction, Space Opera

ebook

First published April 30, 2012

About the author

Aer-ki Jyr is one of the top 20 science fiction authors on Amazon due to his extremely long and ongoing space opera epic STAR FORCE, one of the longest military science fiction series ever written.

Check out his website and forum at www.aerkijyr.com

Reviews

[N.A.K. Baldron · Rating 2 out of 5]

First half is a huge info dump and crackpot philosophy.

[Nikola · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love SF, just as I love cheese - I'll eat almost any kind - as long as it's edible. So, I was not really alarmed by humans-vs-dinosaurs theme from the start. However, now I'm reading the first half of Ambrosia and I'm so confused about if I should continue that now I'm writing this review.

I mean, if it's "Science Fiction", it should be science-based fiction, or at least, if it contradicts known science, the excuse should be plausible. The first part of the book contains specific pseudo-scientific claims so thoroughly debunked it completely breaks my will to continue reading. Maybe the book would be digestible to a Young-Earth Creationist, but unfortunately, I'm not one.

For instance, if you are watching a Star Trek episode and hear: "Altonian phasers are disrupted. Fix them using Heisenberg structure with capacitor style fusion", it sounds plausible. It even adds to the atmosphere. But when you read military SF and read "evolving from a single celled organism is quite ridiculous" you realize the author will not be able to somehow conjure a scientifically plausible way to weave dinosaurs into the story.

It's a shame really, cause I liked the slow-paced narration and Ender's Game / Starship Troopers theme, but the level of disregard for science that is required while reading this book is hardly manageable, especially since it's supposed to be SF.

[Shhhhh Ahhhhh · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I understand other people's gripes about the author using characters' voices to settle his own gripes, I appreciated the bulk of this particular book despite that. I mean, he got pretty preachy with the 'humans are just animals', 'society is our only defense against death', 'all humans should exist under our optimal monoculture', and 'none of them are taking this seriously' thing, it is also very, very consistent with the universe this is set in. Those perspectives are *mostly* correct from the perspective of those characters. There is such coherence, the animal comment aside (in the context of space dinosaur slaves), that I can't honestly tell whether they are merely the logical consequence of the story or the author's actual positions. I"ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say the former.