This book is yet another marine story starting at boot camp. I do not know why but these stories seem to be much more popular than the ones that focus on tech and starships. A shame since I like the latter much more.Anyway, this is a fairly good book. It’s a not too complicated story about a marine, his first training and his first mission. Naturally there has to be the usual clueless, dumbass officer in there that doesn’t know what he’s doing but thinks he does. Fortunately he gets properly dealt with which increases my rating of this book. I hate it when the author lets the morons win or get off the hook because they are politically connected or something. Luckily these authors do not.As a part of the initial story setup, there’s also the, equally obligatory, dumbass civilian contractor that thinks he can screw the marines by supplying shitty equipment. He also gets some of what he deserves although he does get off a wee bit easy for my liking.One review said that the book is “full of swear words, bad themes, and gore”. I do not think it’s that full of it but, it is a marine story. I’m quite happy that the authors didn’t stoop to the, all too common, practice of being politically correct and introduce some new silly word(s) instead of the normal foul ones.A good start of a series but then, I have said that before and been quite disappointed after the first book. We’ll see how it goes with this one. I will read the next one for sure.
Starfist: First to Fight is the first book in a Military Science Fiction series focusing on the 34th FIST (Fleet Initial Strike Team) of the Confederation Marine Corps.The book started strong with an engaging Prologue that drew me in. However, the opening chapters nearly lost me all together. I understand that the authors were trying to introduce characters and the Starfist universe, but I feel that many of the situations in the first half could have been condensed or eliminated to help the story flow. The story doesn't pick up until around the half-way point when the main antagonist enters the picture; that's a long time to wait for the major conflict of a story to begin. The second half returned to the excitement of the Prologue and I sped through those final chapters.One note: nearly 99% of the characters (even minor ones) were introduced "Rank Name "Nickname" Surname"; it made it difficult to pick out the major players. Sometimes, if all a character does is drive or pilot, etc, it's OK to refer to them simply as 'the driver' or 'the pilot'.I wasn't left with an overpowering urge to purchase the next book in the series. However, if a Military Sci-Fi urge ever strikes, I may give another Starfist book a shot.
What do You think about First To Fight (2002)?
This is the first of, I believe, a 14 book series. I believe I have read these books but I can't remember when and I don't remember the books. StarFist is a typical military sci-fi book. There's a lot of character building in this book since it is the introduction to the series. The main character is a young man named Dean. I'll let you read about the rest of his name. He joins the "space marines" and his journey begins. Each book tells a story that involves Dean, not necessarily directly, but he does figure into each book. These are good, easy reads. Sometimes the stories get predictable but they are good stories to read in the end.
—Jim
I was very disappointed. This book seemed to me to be basically a unit of modern-day Marines with plasma rifles fighting every "bad guy" ethnic group from modern-day earth collected together on one planet and led by a reincarnation of Genghis Khan (right down to receiving the reins from his father whose untimely death let him take over the confederation his father had forged). If that sounds far-fetched, I thought it sounded that way, too. I could've overlooked that, though, if it moved quickly or had more creativity to it, but most of the book is Marine boot camp and tedious Marine "oo-rahing" as they carouse in the local town and haze the new guys and talk about the difference between a "master sergeant" and a "staff sergeant", etc. Frankly, the strategies of the bad guys were the only thing that kept me interested enough to finish the book. The ending is somewhat interesting, but overall I wasn't inspired by the book at all.
—Bob
