Review: Honor Flight by P. A. Piatt

It’s Review Time, Happy Readers!

Here’s the blurb & links to Honor Flight on Amazon.

My Review

This is an engaging read about heroes, the bond of brotherhood forged in combat, and fighting aliens! I have some nits to pick that keep me from giving it star number 5, but overall it is a great read.

This is a story that begins with a memorial flight for a group of Space Marines who are visiting the site of their major pyric victory against the race of aliens called the Maltaani. I never got a clear mental image of what these aliens looked like until about 2/5ths into the book. Basically, they are big humanoids that are really tough. Anyway, they pick the same time of the memorial to try a new invasion, leaving the Space Marines, now very very old, to decide how they can help. Unfortunately, the tight-assed by-the-book-even-if-it-screws-us Captain of the supply ship they are on wants to follow the fake ‘orders’ that the Maltaani have issued in the name of the United Nations of Terra to unconditionally surrender. Needless to say, conflict ensues.

The plot starts slowly with a lot of backstory, but quickly builds to the conflict between the captain of the Astral Plane, Major Roarke, and… well… everyone else. The guy is just an uptight prick. A quick reference in the book to the 1954 WWII movie, The Caine Mutiny, was thrown out. Since I had not seen that one, I went and found it. Other than a few situational differences, Roarke is modeled on Humphrey Bogart’s Captain Queeg (only without the potential for sympathy for being crazy). If you’ve never watched that movie, I recommend it as well.

Anyway, most of the build-up and character development is onboard the ship. It involves the main protags, Fortis & Medek and the plans to fight back against the Maltaani invasion forces with a bunch of old men and improvised weapons. While it is not filled with action packed military daring-do, it also never lost my interest because it is well written and the characters are interesting.

I won’t spoil the plot, but I can say that if you make it to the 2/3rd mark, you are in for quite a ride to the finale! Piatt certainly knows how to ramp up the conflict for his characters. While I expected some trouble from Capt. Ass-hat to happen, I did not expect what actually happened! I’m sure you’ll be just as surprised as I was if you decide to read the book.

The final action is exactly the military space opera that is promised in the blurb. I’m not going to tell you what happens, just know that some ass kicking ensues, and you’ll have to read the book to find out whose!

I mentioned a nit-pick earlier that dropped a star out of my rating. Well, that has to do with the aforementioned ass-hattery by Roarke. There was no resolution of his fate, and that left my brain itching. Also, while DINLI is the Space Marines’ version of ‘Oorah’, I still think it was overused and became an annoyance. So much so, to me, that the little surprise in the epilogue intended to make you smile was kind of a groaner. But again, these are nit-picks. I always have them and they may not be shared by most folks.

I give the book 4 stars out of 5 and consider it an Engaging Read. You should check it out.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

This book, though originally written as a stand-alone novel, now has a PREQUEL SERIES about the MC, Abner Fortis & his exploits with the ISMC (International Space Marine Corp).

You can check them out here:

And that’s it, Happy Readers! Until next blog!

Happy Reading!

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