Impulse

This is not literature. This is not high quality fiction, to be discussed in parlor's while sipping brandy. Not even during an afternoon respite, perhaps with some mint juleps or even just a cup of tea and biscuits.

For the record, I also didn't agree that this was a successor to the likes of Asimov (I've seen that reference).

So what was it, and why did I give it 4 stars? Bara's book was in line with Dickson's Childe Cycle, starting at Dorsai!, and that's not too shabby (Dorsai! will always be ranked in my top favorite books of all time). Impulse is a military space opera. Big events, big stakes, some big curtain tugs and waving of hands, and some big dumb objects. While I don't know if any one element of the story stood out for me (though it did remind me a bit of another guilty pleasure, Terry Nixon's Empire of Bones books), I found myself unable to put the book down. Maybe it helped that in this rare case, I was actually carting around a paperback copy of the book, but I found myself reading the entire book in just three days. In a week where I've been sick and missing all of my regular cadences, that says something.

With summer starting up here in the Northern Hemisphere, Impulse makes a great beach read. You're not reading a book like this because you want to explore the human condition - you're reading it for some fun adventure, and it delivers.