Fatal Blade

Decker's War #3

by Eric Thomson

Successful revolts against tyranny need just one a Marine called Zack Decker.Someone was setting fire to the Commonwealth Rim, nurturing a storm to drag humanity through the horrors of colonial warfare and thereby hasten the rise of Empire.  Their plan had just one fatal it didn’t count on an ex-Marine pathfinder with a grudge, a dagger, and a deadly partner.  Zack Decker had seen enough of war to know this one had to be stopped before it turned into an all-out bloodbath, even if that meant ignoring orders and risking his mission as well as his life.  After all, he was still one of the Few…

Genres: Science Fiction

374 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 23, 2016

About the author

Eric Thomson is my pen name. I'm a former Canadian soldier who spent more years in uniform than he expected, serving in both the Regular Army (Infantry) and the Army Reserve (Armoured Corps). I spent several years as an Information Technology executive for the Canadian government before leaving the bowels of the demented bureaucracy to become a full-time author.

I've been a voracious reader of science-fiction, military fiction and history all my life, assiduously devouring the recommended Army reading list in my younger days and still occasionally returning to the classics for inspiration. Several years ago, I put my fingers to the keyboard and started writing my own military sci-fi, with a definite space opera slant, using many of my own experiences as a soldier as an inspiration for my stories and characters. When I'm not writing fiction, I indulge in my other passions: photography, hiking and scuba diving, all of which I've shared with my wife, who likes to call herself my #1 fan, for more than thirty years.

Reviews

[Volpot · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars. Fairly shallow story. The constant snarky dialogue is almost unbearable. Not sure if I'll read more of the series.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one a bit more, as he had a partner with some different skills and didn't just let him do whatever he wanted

[David P. Duffy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Plodding, Predictable and Locker-room Level Banter

"Fatal Blade, Decker's War Book 3," continues the yawn inducing series of a centuries in the future, super Marine Pathfinder, firmly positioned as a "rough around the edges," Fleet Intel Special Agent.

The storyline has the lead character, Jake Decker, along with his nominal naval commanding officer, lover, espionage partner, investigating a brewing colonial war on a far away planet. As usual, the intel gathering morphs to overt combat operations, with Decker being the "super-able, super-competent, super-effective, super-stud," that the author has made him.

The writing continues to be repetitive and contradictory, passages repeated again and again as narrative landfill, and prior plot devices are changed without rhyme or reason. A quotation attributed to Mao is historically accepted as belonging to Stalin. The author has the near identical beer and sex commentary about every other page, Decker "hooking up" with abandon, and being groped definitively on a regular basis. In all, the writing is lazy, unimaginative, lacking in basic skill set, and more fitting for a high school locker room than a commercial published product. The final nail in the coffin, is that in total, this eBook is stale and boring. Flaws, blemishes, faults can to a degree, be overlooked if a story is good and exciting: "Fatal Blade" is neither.

This eBook was fully read via Kindle Unlimited and is not recommended.

[Jon Swenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

Another great story with plenty of action and excitement. I found myself looking forward to the next chapter and now the next book