"When stealing honey, don't stir up the bees."
Star Warrior has the classic Hooke ingredients: good, quirky, well written characters, detailed and visual action and an undertone of humour running throughout. Star Warrior introduces elements of LitRPG into the story. Game, a young engineer and aquaponics farmer has always dreamed of escape through discovering that he has the ability to Syphon, something many dream of but very few have. Before returning home to his parent's farm, Tane decides to get himself chipped, normally a non invasive procedure which potentially increases his prowess in almost everything (but expensive). Waking after the procedure, he learns that something had gone wrong and the mechanic had to open his head to intervene but, not to worry, all had now been solved and could not happen again.
But as soon as he is home, strange events begin and he and his parents are under attack.
The opening passage where Tane gets his chip are delightful, as the reader becomes aquainted with robot humour, which congrats nicely with the more serious problems to come. The accessible RPG panels detailing precise descriptions and useful features of items encountered is a clever device to provide fast information to both the reader and the player at any given time. All of the protagonists are great with the exception, I regret to say, of Tane himself who remains a fairly two dimensional, not too bright, self obsessed teenage boy - oh, there you go, got it! He's the typical teen with add on abilities. Okay.
This is book one in what looks to be another enjoyable Isaac Hooke space extraveganza S.F. special. Definitely recommended for fun and thrills.