The Battle at the Moons of Hell

Helfort's War #1

by Graham Sharp Paul

“A planet-stomping space opera that bursts off the page like a tactical nuke.”—John Birmingham, author of Weapons of Choice The Hammer Worlds—the most brutal and oppressive interstellar government in the universe—have hijacked the Federated Worlds cruise ship Mumtaz, seizing its valuable terraforming cargo and damning its passengers to mining the moons of the prison planet known as Hell. For Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort and the crew aboard deep space scout vessel 387, the mission is infiltrate enemy territory, locate the Mumtaz, and rescue the prisoners. The odds are appalling, and the damage will probably be fatal, but victory is nonnegotiable–especially for Helfort, whose mother and sister were on the Mumtaz. And Michael Helfort will be damned if he’ll let his family rot on the moons of Hell.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Space Opera, Military Science Fiction, Military Fiction, Ebooks, Space

386 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Graham Sharp Paul, born in Sri Lanka, received an honors degree in archaeology and anthropology from Cambridge University and an MBA from Macquarie University. He joined the Royal Navy in 1972, qualifying as a mine warfare and clearance diving officer before reaching the rank of lieutenant commander with the Navy's mine warfare flotilla. In 1983 he transferred to the Royal Australian Navy, serving in its Trials & Assessments Unit and Clearance Diving School before transferring to civilian life in 1987. Paul worked for two Australian companies in the banking and media sectors before setting up his own business development and corporate finance consultancy in 1991. Over the next twelve years he worked on a worldwide range of projects. In 2003 he gave up corporate life to write full-time.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book in "Helfort's War" series by Graham Sharp Paul. The story-line in this book has been used by many authors from Robert A. Heinlein to Elizabeth Moon and David Weber. That being said this book was an enjoyable read.
In this one Michael Helfort is graduating from the Federated Space Fleet College. Just days before he graduates he is reprimanded for flying a lander with a full crew recklessly. He is innocent and has been set up by jealous rivals but can't prove it. He is allowed to graduate anyway and soon finds himself on his first post, a small deep space scout ship. Meanwhile his Mother and Sister embark on a visit to a relative on a far distant planet. The ship they are on is hijacked by a fanatical religious star system known as the Hammer Worlds. They are sent to a planet along with the crew and passengers of the ship where they are forced into slave labor Terra-forming the planet. The Federated Worlds decide this will not stand and soon Michael Helfort and many other find themselves in the fight of their lives when they are sent to rescue his family and the entire crew and passengers from a life of slave labor. A great start to this series.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Slow pacing, no character arc and very dry.

While this book shows promise for a new author, it still needs work. The pacing is very, very slow. Nothing happens until the final 40 pages of the book. If the author was trying to make a point that soldering is 99% boredom and 1% of sheer terror, then he makes his point very well. It just doesn't make a very good read. I'm not against slowly paced books, if there are other interesting aspects to focus on, such as character development. But there is no character arc either.

In addition, while there were a few bright spots in the depiction of epic space battle at the end, overall it was sheer drudgery. It couldn't be any dryer. Once again, while this is probably closer to the mark of what a real space battle would be like -- lots of vector calculations, tactical management, and offensive coordination -- it does not make a good read. Even the descriptions of the damage done by rail gun slugs as they ripped through ships was so repetitive and dry I finally started skipping over them.

*** WARNING *** SOME MIGHT CONSIDER SOME THE FOLLOWING A SPOILER ***
What was particularly annoying is that toward the end of the book, once I realized that nothing much was going to happen, I thought the author might be trying for a good setup for the next book. Alas, no. As the sole surviving senior officer after a brutal battle, the protagonist becomes a well-known hero--despite the fact that he had little to do with the battle. He just happened to survive it. But in any case, you would expect that as a result he would be given a promotion and a more interesting deployment on a well-known ship. A good setup for the next book to really get the series rolling. Instead, he's the same seemingly mediocre junior lieutenant that we started off with at the beginning of the book and he is given an even worse position on a ship with a captain that isn't well liked. Oh, and the captain is friends with the family of the antagonist from the beginning of the book.
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I might give the second book a try to see if the writing improves, but I'm not very optimistic that it will.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this, but not a Hugo contender. Military scifi opera that, while not possessing always original themes, still manages to engage the reader. 3.5 stars.

[Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book one in the Helfort's War series, and I threw in the towel at 46%, otherwise known as page 170. I'd give it 2.5 stars rounded down.

This book seemed like a sure thing so it really surprised me that I wasn't a fan. Everything from the blurb to the opening section had me thinking that this would be right up my alley. Yikes, was I wrong!

The writing wasn't terrible from the standpoint of grammar, vocabulary, and structure. It was the content that ruined the whole darned thing. Let's start with the details. Holy crap, I was tripping over tons and tons and tons of details! Had some of these been edited out, the book would've probably shrunk down to half its size.

The characterization was fair; I just didn't feel a connection to any character. Standard Good or Bad. There wasn't any character nuance, quirks, charm, growth, or pizazz. The castmembers just filled their assigned roles, and that was it. No one really had a unique personality. I am very forgiving when it comes to flawed stories as long as I care about the characters. What a forgettable cast.

The pacing was a problem, too. Nothing significant- other than that promising opening chapter- happened until 31% in. When a story takes 110-120 pages to finally get to (the beginning of) the point, I'd call that problematic. Especially if I'm referring to military sci-fi for Pete's sake.

I really, really wanted to like this, but obviously that wasn't the case.

[L · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cool title, interesting sounding synopsis on the back cover, terrible disappointment. There were so many opportunities for good plot lines, and the author failed to take notice of any of them. Several of the main characters, that seemed like they would be interesting, were never developed. Several events, that seemed as though they would climax, only flopped around, like a fish on land and then died. The main character showed so much promise, but turned out to be lackluster. Lastly, it seemed like there was an initial push to use non-Anglo Saxon surnames, but that fizzled, then went away.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really any new ideas, if you're read one military sci-fi ship battle, you've read everything in here. Pretty cardboard, one-dimensional, uncreative bad guys, a pretty predictable storyline, blah. Some interesting tech ideas, but not enough to make up for the other observations. Not bad if you're into military sci fi and enjoy reading the same thing that's in all the others.

[Trey Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

First half of the book is very dry and slow. However the last third of the book had me on the edge of my seat. The space combat is realistic and awesome to read. The world the Paul has created is very interesting and deep. I am very excited to read more from this series. The book is very dry at times with lots of scifi jargon so beware. Overall fun read.

[Lubos Elexa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Všetko by bolo super, epický dej, výpravné, akčné (okrem množstva rakiet a torpéd, v ktorých som sa strácal), gradujúce, ale neskutočne naťahované (epilóg snáď na 30 stranách) a s veľkými preskokmi medzi etapami deja. Plus, mám pocit, že hlavná postava bol obyčajný štatista, ktorý vlastne nič nedokázal a až po útek lode nehral v deji žiadnu zásadnú rolu...

[Al Cormier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes there can be too much detail. Otherwise, it is a good story.

[Paul Bye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Sci fi / space drama.

[Brownbetty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I was in the mood for dudely SF, and there's really very little more dudely SF to me than a book that starts with a cadet in the academy and takes then through their first command. As such, it was quite decent, and better than some; it managed not to embarrass itself as far as gender and ethnic representation or physics go, although it wasn't really interested in the first two. (I do like a book that worries about its spacesuits giving people the bends. \o/) Women are in roughly half the positions in the military, and if last names can be taken as representative of ethnicity, then the military is only about one-tenth white people. (Does that represent planet-earth demographics? It still seems a bit white-people weighted.)

HOWEVER: I really can't stand it when books abruptly switch to villain-cam and give you their every machination in gruesome detail. I really couldn't care less about the villain, especially if they never encounter the protagonist in person. If the protagonist doesn't have an opinion on the villain, I don't either. So I ended up skipping somewhere between a fifth and a third of the book, and obviously my review is worth correspondingly less. At one point, skimming, the villain said "[spoiler spoiler spoiler:]!" and I went, "What what?" but then realized I didn't care, so let it remain a mystery.

The protagonist, Michael, is career military from a family of career military, and not terribly interesting as a character; he's more a mechanism for exploring military education and enculturation (although I suspect Paul (Sharp Paul? Is that really a name? It sounds like a call sign) would not describe that as his object at all) so this book is mostly only interesting if that is interesting to you. Or physics, because this book has some pretty good space battle physics, from where I stand as an interested amateur.

One side note: the whole military action in this book is based on the hijacking of a passenger space-liner, carrying Michael's sister and mother, who, after their capture, are interned on an asteroid prison, and set to work mining reactor-mass. At one point, the POV switches to his mother who thinks: "For a [enemy:], he seemed like a nice guy, and if he wasn't, it was time [her daughter:] learned to handle herself."

Um, WHAT? I read that as "He's probably not a rapist, but if he was, oh well, Daughter ought to be capable of self-defense." I'm not saying there aren't mothers who might think like this, but I would consider them to be pathologically wrong-headed, and we're supposed to see his mother as a good person. Not only is this icky victim-blaming, that's your daughter, lady. I... yeah. I don't know. WTF, author, wtf.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow and charters not developed to the point where you care about them or their interrelationships. Some interesting and exciting space adventure but unfortunately not enough to make me say that I'm glad I read the book.

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple, plain vanilla plot. Characters are basic, the usual folks in the usual familiar roles. Comfortable military scifi that fulfills the genre standards. Young graduating cadet Michael Helfort from a military family is eager to prove himself, and his sister and mother are captured by The Hammer, a political group in control of a sector of planets where the government sounds similar to North Korea/the Soviet Union type of government with some crazy religious fundamentalism thrown in as an afterthought. Michael's family is traveling on a ship where advanced Federated Worlds' terraforming equipment is being delivered in the hold. The Hammer Worlds have a rule against AI, along with other technological bans, so they are behind the Federated Worlds economically. However, due to murderous underhanded politics in The Hammer one of the players hopes to steal the Federated's terraforming tech and use it secretly on one of the Hammer's barren worlds illegally, since The Hammer's leadership would forbid such AI- involved technology. No, it doesn't quite make sense or logic that a totalitarian system would produce a lone, but highly placed, maverick intent on such a dramatic course of action without allies or group think or a powerful political base within The Hammer, but never mind. Merrick is not a believable character, which is a major flaw in an otherwise typical military conflict scifi story. Kinda meh, if you've been reading non-child literature for more than a decade.

[Steven Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book started a little slow and at first I was fairly sure that I would not keep it or reread it. By the end I found this book to be very good and will definitely add it to my personal library for reread later. This book did take a while to get started but once it got rolling, I could not put it down.

This is good space opera with some politics, but not so much that the action bogs down. Despite large space battles, the author does a good job of keeping the reader engaged without bogging down the reader with too much information causing page skipping.

There is foul language aplenty and some violence, but no graphic raunchy sex, so if you want that in your space opera, look elsewhere. The political aspects are fairly straightforward and does not bog the reader down. This book was a prime example of someone doing everything wrong for the right reasons, paying the ultimate price for their failure.

The enemy, while despicable, is painted with enough humanity that I empathized with their position even though I disagreed with their motives. A thinking and careful enemy is far more interesting than some mindless enemy that you cannot at least understand.

[Roberta · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good solid military science fiction story with political intrigue added. The main character Helfort has something to prove. He lost his seniority at the space academy and to top it off, his mom and sister are on a ship that is hijacked by pirates hired by a hostile government to the federation. He must do his job to the best of his ability and face death multiple times on a scout ship to help rescue his parents while learning how to be a junior officer in the space navy.

A typical coming of age novel, the action sequences are okay, the characterization is above average, the plot is very well constructed, and the intrigue is first rate. I suspect my review of the next novel in the series will be higher as I hope the author will have improved on some of his weaknesses.

Definitely worth reading if you like military SF.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent military science fiction reading. Has good character building although I wasn't sure at first if the main character, Michael Helfort, was going to do anything special. You follow him through a short time a the space academy as a cadet and then to his first assignment.

The story develops the situation within the galaxy where two dominant civilizations are either just finishing a war or getting ready for the next. The Federation, which is Helfort's side, just won a hard fought war with the Hammer of Kraa worlds but just barely. Neither civilization won out-right so they are just messing with each other waiting for the next incident to start another war.

I was pleased to know that this is a four book series but the read should know that the story doesn't end at book 4. Apparently book 5 is going to be done sometime in November 2011. I hope so!

[Richard Clayton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graham Sharp Paul is a relatively new author and one I believe is worth looking at. He writes well in the David Weber, David Drake style of military science fiction. His first novel in the Helfort's War series describes the beginning of the military career of Michael Helfort and his involvement in a war against a totalitarian religious dictatorship that has secretly hijacked a civilian passenger liner along with its crew and passengers, two of which happens to be Michael's mother and sister.

The description of the space naval battles is well done and logically thought out and Paul's depiction of the life of a young naval officer quite realistic. While not quite up to the level of David Weber's Honor Harrington series the book is a solid effort and I am looking forward to more from this author.

[Nathan Balyeat · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty decent space opera, but there's not a whole lot that really stands out to differentiate it or make it better than another.

Old Earth still has power, but is an offscreen player.

The Fed is the "good guys" and The Hammer of Kraa are the "bad guys". The good guys are pretty decent folks, without any sign of corruption and the bad guys are hard core Stalinist purger types.

I'm not disappointed that I bought this book, but it's not one I'm going to recommend unless you like hard core sci-fi space combat. There's not a whole lot else going on.

[Helen · Rating 3 out of 5]

On a re-read, I was struck by how cold and un-motherly Mrs Helfort was during the whole book (I'd enjoy the holiday more if only my daughter would shut up yapping! Oh, she'll be OK with that creepy dude that is paying special attention to her, and if not it's time she learnt that life isn't all sunshine and roses). Brrr! :(

Other than that, pretty average military SF. It captures the "hurry up and wait" aspect of war pretty well, but it feels like a giant set up for book 2... onto which we go!

[Bernard · Rating 3 out of 5]

All the elements for a good story are there. The characters are reasonably detailed and the plot is nicely constructed.

Unfortunately, the writing is a bit thin. It wasn't bad writing, just boring as hell. The author somehow manages to make everything boring. Space battle! No, space battle... I noticed that the political players were described quite clearly and with a bit of energy. The other characters, the ones fighting the battles, were not described with as much energy.

While a solid read, it could have been written with more energy.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It could have done without some of the detailed battle description (can't he just describe the technical details once, and then say something like "the heavy destroyers continued to bombard the small scouts with their misiles and rail guns"?), and the hero is awfully goody two-shoes, but otherwise a fun read. There's a high body count, but mostly you don't get to know the characters well enough to care that much.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

#1 in the Helfort's War series. Entertaining space opera.

Helfort's War series - The Hammer Worlds have hijacked the Federated Worlds cruise ship Mumtaz, damning its passengers to mining the moons of the prison planet Hell. For Junior Lieutenant Michael Helfort and the crew aboard deep space scout vessel 387 are assigned to the rescue mission. The odds are appalling but victory is nonnegotiable – especially for Helfort.

[Kayleigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with military sci-fi. When done well, it can be thought-provoking, exciting, gritty, and poignant.

This...is not one of those times. An utter lack of context, plodding story, and dull, one-dimensional characters suck the potential and energy out of an interesting (though admittedly somewhat cliche) premise.

[Tbloxham · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun little sci fi romp, a bit contrived perhaps and not as focused in it's story as the Lost Fleet series, but still a lot of fun to read. I think it lacks a greater protagonist than the Hammer, who are too obvious a villain for a space opera.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

A little short on the physics of space combat -- see The Lost Fleet series (by Jack Campbell) for that -- but an enjoyable series. The author's naval experience clearly shows through in his writing, which is a huge plus.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ended better than it started. Couldn't put it down toward the end. A little technical at times, but the gbattles were good. I also liked the political side of the conflict, since it showed oth sides. I look forward to reading the second book.

[Marty Ponnech · Rating 5 out of 5]

That of all the far ranging subjects covered in the Science Fiction genre, the greatest advances come in the weaponry of the military. "Sigh"

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Formulaic ... but a good read. Mind-candy, ya know?

[TheIron Paw · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent space-opera, but nothing more (not much "science" nor ideas - just a decent adventure story)

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Hopefully the others are just as good. It is has echos of the Honor Harrington series which were my favourite books ever.