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A review by rik_sixx
The Heart of Matter by Evan Currie
3.0
Although this is another good yarn from Evan Currie, the pacing nearly led to me giving up. As other users have said, a large portion of the book is given over to a ship-to-ship battle in space, while another sizeable chunk is given to a ground-based battle. Where the first book felt like pure space opera, book #2 in the series drifts into sci-fi military fiction.
What I really wanted from the 2nd entry in this series was more from the characters. Other than Weston and perhaps Stephanos, the other characters felt interchangable. From name alone, I didn't know which character is which, or what their role was at any given time.
There are also some strange quirks which were quite jarring at times. For example, over-use of certain words within close proximity; it seemed like once Currie discovered "irascible" he needed to get his money's worth from the new thesaurus. I think at one point i actually saw the phrase "in fact, it was a matter of fact that [a thing happened], in fact".
Despite these gripes, the story and setting are great and after taking a few breaks from the book I then raced through the final chapters. It's a great holiday (or lockdown) book that doesn't take much brain power, and I'm genuinely interested in reading the rest of the series!
What I really wanted from the 2nd entry in this series was more from the characters. Other than Weston and perhaps Stephanos, the other characters felt interchangable. From name alone, I didn't know which character is which, or what their role was at any given time.
There are also some strange quirks which were quite jarring at times. For example, over-use of certain words within close proximity; it seemed like once Currie discovered "irascible" he needed to get his money's worth from the new thesaurus. I think at one point i actually saw the phrase "in fact, it was a matter of fact that [a thing happened], in fact".
Despite these gripes, the story and setting are great and after taking a few breaks from the book I then raced through the final chapters. It's a great holiday (or lockdown) book that doesn't take much brain power, and I'm genuinely interested in reading the rest of the series!