Book Review - The Silver Ships by S. H. Jucha

I found this book to be a bit of a contradiction. It starts well with some decent hard sci-fi, showing a well constructed world and some nice ideas. His imagination is the author's biggest strength, in particular he builds a convincing world. That aspect and the technology really shine.

Unfortunately the human side wasn't as strong. The characters are mostly likeable. A bit more depth would have been appreciated to better contrast their origins, and to develop their personalities. However their interactions lack the richness of the technical side. More than that their behaviour is almost always too convenient. There's little personal conflict, and they all seem happy to accept a stranger as their leader with little build up.

This is also reflected in the pacing, and the detail. The science, engineering and space are vividly detailed, but the human interactions zip by without real reflection. It also suffers from the faceless enemy problem. The encounter retains its mystery, although you do learn a taste of what is to come. I'm not quite sure if it's enough to entice me on to the next book in the series.

An explorer-tug captain, Alex Racine detects a damaged alien craft drifting into the system. Recognizing a once in a lifetime opportunity to make first contact, Alex pulls off a daring maneuver to latch on to the derelict.

Alex discovers the ship was attacked by an unknown craft, the first of its kind ever encountered. The mysterious silver ship's attack was both instant and deadly.

What enfolds is a story of the descendants of two Earth colony ships, with very different histories, meeting 700 years after their founding and uniting to defend humanity from the silver ships.

Click here to buy The Silver Ships from Amazon