Rookie Privateer

This was an interesting book. I felt like elements of the story were a bit far-fetched, and at times stretched my ability to suspend disbelief. The dialogue “eye-roll” quotient was a bit high (this is the number of times I roll my eyes due to awkward conversation that wouldn’t happen in real life). It felt like an author who is still in the beginning phases of honing his craft.

That said, I did find the story rather endearing. The main characters are likable, and by the end of the book I found myself more invested in the resolution than I expected. The payoff was good, and almost made me want to read the next book in the series.

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I think people tend to rate books higher than they should, so I try to rate books on a harder scale, while being consistent over time. Jerry Foster’s book rating scale:

5 – Fantastic. Life-altering. Only 10-20 books in a lifetime.
4 – Very good.
3 – Worth your time.
2 – Not very good.
1 – Atrocious

Rookie Privateer is the first book in the Privateer Tales series by Jamie McFarlane.

Im not entirely sure why I didnt fully appreciate this book. Its definitively an encouraging start in a space opera series. Maybe its the lack of irresistible draw before we get to the crux of Liam and Nick taking on the Red Houzi. Or the ridiculous notion that an elite space force, such as the Mars Protectorate Navy, would put so much faith in two barely adults.

Honestly, Liams personality was also a little off to me. I mean he was mentioned to be incredibly smart, but then in turn would act in such ignorant ways. Or as with the trial after the attack on Colony 40, where he zones out of the trial to horndog after Tabby on the vid. Made me want to hit him. For murder, hes being (wrongfully) charged with murder and hes only sitting there thinking shes so pretty.

Thats not even taking into account how completely obvious all of the traitors/spies/antagonists still on Colony 40 were. The dichotomy between differing scenes within the book; be it the plot, or level of believability really cut into any entrenchment within the story itself. I feel as if I was dragged out of it more times than I can reasonably place a good rating on, with how jarring this impacted my enjoyment for the work.

Bottom line: if you like Weber and Heinlein (the highest of praise in my book) then you’ll enjoy Rookie Privateer.

This was a truly well written book with strong characters and an excellent action-filled plot line in an extremely well constructed universe. The only negative is that it took about 1/5th of the way in before the main plot got going. That first fifth was relevant and necessary backstory about life where the main characters grew up, but with the word “privateer” in the title I just knew they’d be going elsewhere and was over eager for that to happen. I suspect that if I hadn’t known that then the backstory (well written in itself) would’ve been more fun. I know that I will be reading this book again (which in itself shows how much I enjoyed it) and I’m sure I will savor those opening chapters more when I do.

This is the first of a series but it’s not a serial so there is no cliff hanger here. Having said that, I’m going to get book 2 and I’m sure most readers will want to as well.

So, excellent writing, strong plot with great action scenes and really great character development = super easy to recommend this book. I almost gave it five stars, which I almost never do (to me only the best of Heinlein or Weber, the original Dune, or equivalent books, would get five stars). If you like adrenaline filled fun the go for it.

At the beginning I wasnt sure if I could make it through the book. Theres an awful lot of explaining what and why and how, and it reads more like a young adult novel. But it just kept getting better and better. The profanity and sex are kept to a strictly TV appropriate level (is there a cozy space opera genre?) but the novel does not suffer in the least for it. I like gritty realism when appropriate but this type of child-friendly nice guy space opera can be nice as well, and the author nicely handles the balance of life and death struggle on one side and the desire to create a clean opus on the other. Im not at all sure that the author intended this as a young reader Work. I do know that I never felt talked down to or like I was wallowing in teen angst, which I despise. Rather, the feel to me was more like reading a golden age scifi novel, though one with more hard science and economics, and less hand waving, than was the norm of that age. Some authors simply prefer to write without profanity or graphic sex, and while personally Im fine with both, novels without them are great too.

Themes would not be at all out of place in a pre-war space opera, but the book still manages to be a pretty realistic near-future read. The setting is a non-unified Earth expanded into space; the explanation for that is spot-on, enough to be believable and serve the story without bogging it down, but also enough to flesh out the greater conflict looming, against which the immediate plot lines are set.

I decided recently that my life is too short to read bad books. Given that I like both Tolstoy and Asimov, this resulted in countless occasions where I didn’t even finish the free sample, thirty pages of stilted dialog and not so much as written but scratched by numbers characters in shoot ’em up, poorly disguised as Sci-Fi.

But “The Rookie Privateer” has shown a promise quickly – a book that starts from a detailed explanation of how to fix an ore sled cannot be too bad. I wasn’t mistaken. The book is rich in unexpected but totally believable details, such as pirates neglecting waste disposal systems on a spaceship. The characters are likable including love interests, the plot dynamic with unexpected developments – including shoot outs and martial arts.

This book is top 10% of the Sci-Fi book on amazon, not quite Hugh Howey yet, but the author has potential. I’ll be definitely buying the other books.

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