Elite: Legacy

by Michael Brookes

The mining colony Freeholm in the Artemis system is celebrating ten years of independence. Once a penal colony for political prisoners from the neighbouring planet of Laphria, the station is now a thriving mine and refinery.

The brutal murder of two of the station’s resident traders when ambushed in the surrounding asteroid belt sends shockwaves through the community. With the identity of the attackers unknown, Freeholm’s head of security and hero of the rebellion, Darik Cavus, must discover the deadly conspiracy unfolding against his home.

They cannot face the threat alone. Darik’s daughter, Julia, must travel and find help before the station’s small defence force is overwhelmed. The forces moving against the colony seek to prevent her mission.

Events start to spiral out of control for Julia and her small band of allies, and nothing is as it first seems.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction

414 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2015

About the author

Michael Brookes is a Game Consultant with Frontier Foundry so rather than making games he now helps publish other people's games. He is also a volunteer and committee member with the German Shepherd Dog Welfare Fund assisting mostly with their online activities. And because he decided that he isn't busy enough has various other projects on the go including a website attempting to chronicle the history of his local village and using AI art tools to illustrate a new edition of John Milton's Paradise Lost.

Reviews

[E Kummeneje · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty decent SF set in the Elite: Dangerous universe. Brookes weaves a great story with lots of intrigue, a cast of acceptably nuanced characters that all have interacting goals, and the action itself is well visualized and fast-paced. However, there are quite a few points here that I'd consider "rookie mistakes". Most egregious to me is that Brookes falls back on the "faceless enemies" trope towards the end of the books: the main characters are faced with a large number of enemy combatants, which are exclusively referred to as "fighters" and die in droves with no fanfare or thought to the fact that they presumably all had lives. Brookes also takes some odd liberties with the universe as it is in the game - his constant reference to mega-freighters much larger than all known pilot ships is fanciful, and he also fails to draw sufficient inspiration from the existing features of the game universe and mechanics. All in all however it's a good read, though I'm uncertain about how well suited it is to draw new customers to the main product of the franchise: the game itself.

[Travis Knight · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book suffers from very poor linguistic structuring and editing. It makes the process of reading it uncomfortable and frustrating. Specifically, the author constantly joins independent clauses by commas, chaining together long and often disconnected thoughts in a way that is jarring and difficult to follow. Above the sentence-level issues, the narrative lens rarely follows a cohesive line of thought; introspective monologue roves back and forth almost at random, dumping heavy but monotonous exposition on the reader. The effect is to fill out each chapter with a lot of emptiness that frustrates more than it informs of intrigues.

I want to justify the two-star review this way: I think that with a more aggressive editor, Brookes could have a good science-fiction novel here. At this stage, however, it is too challenging to read because of the difficulties of navigating the odd grammar constructions. More aggressive would be adjusting the unfocused lens; but it could be done, and I think overall slimming the novel down would improve it.

I'll give Brookes credit for this: when he is writing space combat, he's actually rather adept. My favorite scenes in the book were the two space confrontations I got to read. But they were too far apart, and frankly not long enough. It's a shame he didn't lean into his combat writing skills more. He expresses relative speed, space, and strategy very, very well.

We'll be talking about it at length on the Canon Fodder Podcast, Episode 05, but at 56%, I gave up. At a certain point, the bloated but flat cast, the staccato dialogue, or the heavy but uninteresting exposition just became too much for me.

If you're an Elite Fan, steer clear of this one, because it won't meaningfully expand the game universe for you--and it won't really entertain you, either.

[Fenris Oswin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this. Starts off with good scene setting and introduction to the Elite universe and then gets straight in to heart of the story, which is well thought out and kept me turning pages. To use a oft used phrase, I couldn't put it down! In fact I read it Elite: Legacy within two days and was sad when I got to the end.

Hoping there will be a follow up...

[Brian Harrison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no expectations going into this which really worked to my advantage. This book was a lot of fun. There were quite a few errors, missing words, wrong words, etc, but if you can get past that, then the story is great. Didn't remind me of any other sci fi book that I have read which really made this all the better. I definitely recommend.

[Crowley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding fiction in the Elite: Dangerous universe, I'm inspired to seek out other work by this author as a result.