Ark Royal by Christopher NuttallMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In the 'what happens next' department, Christopher Nuttall plays a winning hand. His tale of aging interstellar war ship Ark Royal pressed into desperate battle against invading aliens is a page turner.
His characterizations, however, draw a blank. The Captain is hardly creditable as a drunk of many years who attempts to set aside the bottle because "he must." Having some experience with drug addicts and alcoholics, the Captain would've died years earlier from a corroded liver. And no amount of duty, honor, humanity, would have stopped his descent.
There is an anemic love story and personalities you sense you've met over and over again in books and film. The news reporters, for the most part, are caricatured so broadly as to be cartoons.
But for all that, I read the story straight through, eager to learn the fate of Earth and the Ark Royal. I was reminded of Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, a techno-military page powerhouse with thin characters that also gripped my attention.
If you like your space war fiction at a rapid pace, give this one a try.
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