It was only in Chapter 14 that the story began to make sense and have real consistency. Until then, it was entertaining but nothing to write home about.

Nevertheless, the last chapters were so good that increased my enjoyment and interest in how the series follows, to the point that I immediately started [b:Dominant Predator|17402451|Dominant Predator (The Borders War, #2)|S.A. McAuley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1377006327s/17402451.jpg|24237319]. ( )

As a start to a new series, I have to say this is an intriguing beginning. With two tough alpha characters who are sworn enemies yet feel an indisputable attraction to each other, the stage is set for personal as well as story drama. How to describe this book and the emotions it made me feel? This is tough because they were all over the place. From shock about the future world S.A. McAuley created here (300 years of war!!!), to unease about the violent nature of the relationship between the main characters, and admiration for the political intrigue she set up, it was all there. Maybe the easiest way to summarize what I have seen of this world so far is "disturbing".

Merq is a soldier to the core. He's strong, an excellent sniper, a tough fighter, almost immune to levels of pain that would kill a normal person, and with bare traces of a conscience. For him following orders is as natural as breathing, maybe more. It isn’t really clear whose orders he's following throughout most of the book, at least it wasn't clear to me. In a world of double identities, spies, and counter intelligence, half the fun of reading a story is trying to figure out who is on whose side. Merq doesn’t have any of those issues, and while he is loyal to his superiors, he also falls for an enemy soldier and doesn't seem to be able to stop his attraction. Needless to say, there are a few major confrontations over the seventeen years this story spans.

Armise is an enigma. He is the object of Merq's lust and attraction, but Merq doesn’t really know a lot about him. While Armise is one of the enemy's snipers, he doesn’t seem to be as determined to kill Merq as I would have expected. He lets several opportunities to end Merq's life pass, and while Merq believes that he stopped Armise, I wasn't so sure. In the end, all becomes clear, but the suspense is masterfully developed and maintained up to the last pages of this book.

Loyalties are fierce, yet from my point of view it was very tough to decide who was "right", or morally better. Since Merq tells the story, I automatically wanted to side with him, and that would have some merit. The problem is that the exact stances and objectives of any of the five countries that are left, including Merq's, are so foreign, I had no benchmark against which to really decide. And maybe that is the whole point of this series? Once everyone is at war with everyone else, out to kill and destroy, maybe none of them are morally okay any longer?

Now that this book has been rereleased, I found it even more enjoyable and fascinating than the original edition I read years ago. The elimination of all the flashbacks alone contributed hugely to my enjoyment. So did the additional scenes, and the glossary and additional information in the back helped me keep track of “who is who” in this scary future version of Earth. Despite all these clarifications, the sense of mystery, impending doom, and curiosity have not been eliminated at all. All they have done is remove some unnecessary lack of clarity with the effect that I liked this novel even more this second time around.

If you don’t like books about war and violence, stay away from this one. If you're curious to find out what might happen if we decide we need to go back to fighting for dominance with weapons, rather than wielding economic supremacy or diplomacy, this is an interesting look at how that might potentially go. This story is gritty, powerful, and will grab your attention and not let go once you start reading. And even though I have read this series before, I can’t wait to see what changes and additions the author has made to the next volume!


NOTE: This book was provided by Pride Publishing for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews. ( )

3.5 Further review to come.

I wanted soooooo much to give this a 4 or higher because the writing was on-point. However, the timeline was ridiculously confusing and there was so much told to us without explanation that I realized had this been fleshed out more; it would have been a solid 4 or 5. World-bulding was great, characters great, and I'm definitely intrigued. I really want to know the whole back-history and present day history of these characters. I know this is to be a series, but I still felt it was too much story packed within this first clip. It felt a little derivative of Special Forces and Hunger Games, but not so much that it became distracting. Fans of both should like this. Still...a solid start. ( )

No spoilers.

An extremely good (sci-fi/fantasy/futuristic) storyline of a time 500 years into our future, where you can kill people with sonic-rifles, which have the bonus of killing you on the inside, without all the mess of blood and gore and intestines that usually mark the nitty-gritty facts of war. You just fall dead to the ground. Clinical. And also unemotional. Yes, it would certainly be easier to kill someone, when you don't actually see the damage you are doing.

Main characters Merq and Armise are of course on opposite sides of the conflict, but I had great trouble following the different sides, and who was what on which side and why. There were states, and Presidents and Premieres and Prime Ministers, and god knows who belonged where. Then there were Revolutionaries and Oppositionists and Nationalists, and I don't know who revolutioned against which opposition or what nationalist haven.

Safe to say, I was confused. And 88 pages were simply not enough to clear my confusion.

Now, in her book, An Immovable Solitude, the author gets all the proverbial little ducks in a row, with all the emotions in place, before taking us on a long and crazy ride all over the planet. Here, not so much. It is hard and harsh, and then harder and harsher. Maybe this is what she was aiming for? But it made it really difficult for me to find anyone to root for. I could hardly connect with the MCs, they felt flat, except right at the end, when they started to come alive and think and talk. And that's when the book ends.

Perhaps a bit too much telling going on? Maybe it is simply too little dialogue to show what's happening?

This story was different, and as you've seen, I'm not sure I agree on the format; it is too short for a serious story and too wordy to be a concise short story. I find the world building to be a bit on the info-dumping side of things, and that kind of throws me out of the narrative, but all in all a believable world was created.
Too bad it finished right when it was getting interesting.

And that's when I remember that it is a series.

Now, why write your story into a series, if your first book is only 88 pages long? If the other two are anything like this one, that makes it A BOOK, in my opinion, ONE book. Not three. A series is what you do when you have too many words to fit in one book, and you're not finished telling your story when you're clocking in at 300 pages. (Which is often the case with sci-fi/fantasy/futuristic novels, as the world building can take a lot of time and effort to handle convincingly).

I love this author, but I don't feel her true voice is coming alive in this work. The boys don't connect like her boys usually connect, not on an intellectual level, nor emotionally. They are too busy trying to tell me about a future world with data chips and surge-pills, tracker devices and whatnots to actually show me what they feel. Ms McAuley's finest voice is usually in the emotion of nature and human nature, in resonance. Unfortunately, I did not hear much of it here. Perhaps in the second and third installment of the series?

I'm gladly going to read the rest of this story (as once I'm invested in a pair, I want to know what happened) but I really feel there should simply have been more chapters to this book, not a new book coming out at a later date.

****

My opinion may vary from yours, but I always try to convey my most honest thoughts about a book and a story.
I was given a free ARC of this story, as a gift from the author, no strings attached. I did not promise to review it.
( )

Very strange novel, with an original approach that I’m still thinking about; I didn’t want to write a review soon after I finished the book cause I wanted to think about it, I wanted to find a way to convey the feeling. The author doesn’t introduce her characters, they are actually presented to you with a bag of events you don’t know; the author will jump back and forward in their life until you will have all the elements to put together the pieces of the puzzle, but again, you will have to do that by yourself. The second thing I notice is that, in this post-apocalypse future, time is inconsistent and they are distances; in the course of few pages, the characters spend together almost 20 years, starting as barely legal soldiers to end as pushing 40 revolutionaries. The strangest thing of all is that for all those 20 years they are at the same time lovers and worst enemies, always at the opposite fronts. When it was war, they were fighting against each other, when it was (barely) peace time, they were competing against each other at the Olympics. But do not imagine Olympic Games as you know them, the Olympics in this story are dark and horrific, more like the Roman arenas where gladiators were fighting to death.

Anyway expect the unexpected from this story, do not expect linearity, wait for the turn of the tables; the only constant is that Merq and Armise love each other… to death.

Warning: this one was quick and the introduction to a series, The Borders War, so there is an hanging ending.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D4119FC/?tag=elimyrevandra-20