A technical manual with few embelishments

Based in the Starfire* universe this novel details a conflict between an alliance of the standard, and unimaginative, aliens (A cat species, a bird species…etc…) and humanity vs aliens that are analogous giant Spiders.

Now I struggled with reading this and frankly I can’t call what I did “finishing the novel.” No. Instead I merely endured this tome detailing the technical, strategic and scientific minutiae of this universe. And least forgivable wasn’t the jargon but there was no on-ramp. You were expected to know what some of the technologies was. For example an "SMBHAWK" is a super sophisticated weapon that turned the tide of many battles and wars before. There was never an explanation of what this was. You were expected to know from previous books or from context clues alone. It took a threadbare webpage on an all but abandoned wiki to confirm most of what I had suspected about the "SMBHAWK".

One of my biggest pet peeves is that if you must do outside research to understand the basics of the story then its not a good story.

The politics and inter-working of this universe was explained when needed but the author spent most of his efforts on the battles, each one a detailed breakdown of universe specific technologies, ship classes and numbers with no real emotional connection.

This is the second time I read this book, the first was in middle school and I could not finish it and now I remember why.

If you want to read the equivalent of a 4-5 dozen wiki pages of detailing battles that happened only in PC games and table top games then this is for you.

The writing itself isn’t bad and is the only thing saving this book from a 'D' or lower.

*Starfire is a board wargame (a "4X", eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) simulating space warfare and empire building in the 23rd century, created by Stephen V. Cole in 1979.