“They won’t stop. They won’t communicate. Can this hotshot spacepilot and his comrades step up to be Earth’s last line of defense?
Ryan Fall’s recklessness is his own worst enemy. Pushing the limits in every Cyber Cycle race, his risky manoeuvres bring the authorities down on him for underage racing. His only option is to join the advanced mech program – and learn to fight for what really matters.
Under the command of a distant captain, Ryan joins a special-purpose squad and he’s shocked to discover what they’re being trained for. A huge alien armada is bearing down on Earth, and it’ll take every pilot they’ve got to have a chance of survival.
With nowhere to run, every decision the rookie pilot makes could be the difference between the destruction of everything he loves and saving humanity.
Can the wildcard mech pilot focus his skills and end an extra-terrestrial nightmare?
Reality Check is a gripping military sci-fi adventure launching the Weight of the World series, and combines experimental high-tech weaponry with the devastating consequences of war against a seemingly superior alien invasion.
Earth, humanity, and a place to belong – it’s worth fighting for.”
Title: Reality Check
Series: Weight of the World #1
Author: Dave McCreery
Page Count: 384
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: 4.0/5.0
Date Read: December 23rd, 2023
| Reality Check by Dave McCreery was my sixth full read from SPSFC-3’s first round. Though I may still return to some of the other reads, I believe this will be my final official full read from this round as time if winding down and I team is narrowing our selections based on competition scoring for the deadline next month. With that being said, I’ll toss out the usual disclaimer this this review and any scoring or rating mentioned within are strictly of my own opinions and do not necessarily reflect Team Peripheral Prospectors overall. This was another book from the first round that I had sampled early on and showed promise and wanted to return to read the entire story. The overall theme worked well for me. The stories and characters kept me engaged throughout. I really only had a couple real hang-ups which I’ll get to shortly. The pacing was relatively smooth for my reading style. There was plenty of ebb and flow to the story. There were a few minor errors that tripped me up but overall it went well. The names of characters and placed were easy enough to keep straight yet follow along. One of my first issues I’ll mention was some of the words or language used. Specifically the word “Coo” which I’m assuming from its use was some kind of curse in this world. This one is used quite frequently so it did kind of derail me momentarily from time to time. The other is along the same line which was the use of “Cha” which I’m guess was used in place of either “Thanks” or “Thank you”. I think both of these may be easier for a younger reader to swallow though, so not a huge deal. The world building was interesting. It starts out planet side and for a short time we learn a bit about this world in general which was intriguing. I thought it set the tone for things in general well. Before long we go on quite the mysterious adventure with Ryan and Zack which leads up off planet to a space station. From there we begin to learn the scope of this world or universe a bit more. We had a small mix of cultures which were mostly between military and non-military civilians until we make contact with non-typical humanoids. I wasn’t sure where things were going with the relationship of cycle racing but that was a fun aspect to me as well. The character development started off a bit slow and shallow but I feel it did evolve well from about the mid-point of the book onwards. Ryan’s arc was a wide one but it kept me interested as he was working on finding his place in this world the author has built. There are numerous relationships between Ryan and other characters which help set the tone during various parts of the story. I thought even some of the side character arcs were interesting as well. General Mathews, Captain Ryder and her sister were all good points to this story for me. As I mentioned, this was an enjoyable read over all. Now I’ll get to my biggest issue I had with this read. And this is strictly my own opinion and this might work well with other readers. I was enjoying the end of this book until probably the last ten pages or so. The very end of the book we were left with quite the cliff hanger. If that wasn’t bad enough, the epilogue continued with yet another abrupt cliff hanger just a couple of pages later. Being honest, this left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth with what was a very entertaining read for me otherwise. I will still more than likely be willing to pick this series up in the future just to see where things go from here though. World Building 4/5 Pacing 3.5/5 Character Development 4/5 |
2 Comments
Ahhh so glad to see you mostly liked the books this round!
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