Fractured Earth (Ascension Wars Book 3)

I\’ve read stronger apocalypse books but that doesn\’t mean that this one (or this series) isn\’t good. Yes, it drags in places, but I think I just have a prejudice about lengthy battle scenes. Battle scenes are important in a story like this. I just grow impatient. I didn\’t like the character of Commander Tyira (sp?). Not because he was the bad being but because the character was so two dimensional. Maybe he was a psychopath but he was a cardboard psychopath. I\’m not saying we need to know his motivation (although we do learn that). Psychos are not stupid or shallow and we needed to see more depth if he was going to be a critical part of the story. The grammarian in me was happy. There were no major faux pas. The story followed a logical enough path and did not (possible spoiler alert) have a happy ending for all the major characters. I do think Clayton Cross should have rescued that poor cat though.

I don’t know if it was Amazon or someone else who told the authors to take one novel and pad it out for 2, 3 or more books but this, along with the second volume is a shining example of when that fails. This had pages and pages of tedious moments that were only there to pad out the story to make it a ‘book’ to sell. If you read this book you’ll finally get an answer to the question of how many pages can a simple fight scene be dragged out to. I’m serious, simple moments are carried on for page after page and to make it worse they add nothing to the overall story beyond adding more money to the authors and Amazon’s pockets… After enjoying the first volume and suffering through the second and third I won’t be reading the fourth! Nor will I be reading any more of Mr. Scott’s works…

I found this book to be the best of the series. Maybe because I now know the characters, but really liked the pacing. There were some surprises that also added to the story. This (to me) was the most enjoyable of the three books. I think Clayton could be a bit more of a badass because if some of the things done to his family/group were done to mine, compassion would not necessarily have be an easy choice. Book 4 is around the corner and I plan to download it soon.

I\’ve enjoyed reading Ascension Wars. This book was as good as any of the others in the series, but it was a bit slow-moving and the main plot is not terribly large-scale or dynamic. As everyone fights over scraps left over by a new alien engineered virus sweeping across the Earth, the human resistance fights to stay alive against other groups of humans, alien/human hybrids, and the dregs (the failed hybrids) who inhabit much of the Earth. There were a few unexpected twists and the ending was short, but turned out in a reasonable way. I was a bit surprised at the end that cooler minds prevailed and the humans and hybrids came to a peaceful co-existence. I\’ll be interested to see what happens in the next book later this year.

I really enjoyed this book, 3rd in series. The 1st book was just ok, I seriously debated even continuing with the 2nd. But I\’m glad I did. The 2nd book was better, not great but better. I had no reservations about continuing the series at this point and quickly bought the 3rd. I will definitely read the 4th. I like how everything doesn\’t always work out for every character. A lot of books in this genre are a bit like fairytales. Everybody constantly overcomes insurmountable odds and makes it to the end in overwhelmingly unbelievable style. I know it\’s fiction and I understand some suspension of critical thinking is required but sometimes it\’s too much. I found these stories to have a dose of more realistic outcomes.

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