CBR11 Bingo: Summer read
I’ve long struggled with BV Larson. He’s, supposedly, one of the most popular ebook writers, but his books have been….problematic.
And this one is no different.
Rebel Fleet starts off well enough. Leo Blake, out of the US Navy, is now a beach bum in Hawaii. He stumbles upon a mysterious vessel in the ocean, and is propelled through a series of violent interactions that lead, ultimately, to him joining a vast intergalactic fleet of starships. It gets a little outrageous. But the beginning is fairly interesting. Blake trying to figure out what’s happening, and why, was interesting and fun. Once he figured it out, though, the book – while still interesting – lost much of it’s novelty and nearly all of its mystery.
Which made the rest of the book…..little different from his Undying Mercenaries series.
Both series are about a large young man who is a selfish, pathological liar and smartass who also effortlessly sleeps with a lot of women. And he’s ruthlessly capable, often without even realizing it. He’s making it up as he goes along, and is often succeeding in spite of himself and to the consternation of everyone around him.
The characters around him are hollow, often defined by one characteristic. For women, it’s their beauty (sometimes their superficial disgust at the heroes behavior). For men, it’s often their envy for, or hatred of, the hero. And our protagonist seems to be little more than the vessel for the author’s adolescent fantasy of what a big, strong man is supposed to be.
As entertaining as these books are, it is, frankly, nauseating.
I would say that I don’t know why I keep reading these books – but it’s not really a mystery. They are fairly entertaining, in spite of everything that prevents me from recommending them to people.