Posts
This week I decided to review Legion of the Damned: Andromeda’s Choice by William
C Dietz.
The novel begins with a televised mass execution of dissidents opposed
to the reign of Empress Ophelia, and the empress watches with
her young son who suffers from headaches due to his mother having extra
personalities downloaded into his brain to make him a stronger leader.
The
story then shifts to Andromeda Mckee, once known as Catherine Carletto before
being forced to assume a new identity and joining the Legion to escape after
her family was targeted by the purges launched when the empress seized power.
After a skirmish with Hudathan forces, she returns to base where she is informed
that she is being sent to Earth to receive a medal from the planet’s governor.
But while traveling to Earth, she encounters Ross Royer, a man who once tried to
date her in college only to be rejected. Ross recognizes Cat’s handball
style in Andromeda’s play style and plans to capture her, seeking revenge for her rejecting him and a
reward for catching her.
This eventually leads to a fight where Andromeda kills him and his two accomplices. After she reaches
Earth, Andromeda returns to what had once been her home and checks an old hiding
place where she finds a communications device left by her uncle, who is the military
leader of the Freedom Front which seeks to bring down Ophelia. Upon discovering
why his niece is on Earth, her uncle gives Andromeda a tag to plant on the
governor which will serve as a beacon for a Freedom Front homing weapon.
But
when Ophelia and her son arrive to be part of the award ceremony, Andromeda is
forced to choose her target. In the end, she picks the governor because she is
unwilling to cause the Empress’ son to watch his mother die. But this leads to
her uncle disowning her because he believes she now has the blood of any future
victims of Ophelia’s reign on her hands. And, during the trip to her Legion post, she puts down an underground fight ring, but in the process she angers the
officer who was the true brains behind the ring, an officer who soon becomes one
of her direct superior officers.
And some agents of the Imperial justice system
suspect, based on her actions at the assassination, that she knew what was
coming, so they save a Legion cyborg from execution and send him to try to
discover the truth about her. And the native groups which wish to drive the
legion from their world are gaining strength, partially due to the Legion
accidentally building a base on some of their holy ground.
But even after the
base is moved, native enemies are closing in, leaving Andromeda to face a superior
who dislikes her, a cyborg spy seeking her secrets, and an enemy strike force
closing in.
I give the book 7 out of 10. The basic story is mostly well-written and the combat scenes are well done, but there are some parts that don’t
make sense to me, such as a couple of big ones near the end. Also, it seems like
some of the evil actions undertaken by Ophelia or that she remembers undertaking
apparently serve no purpose in the book other than making her a worse person
from the reader’s prospective, and I dislike such villains in stories. Furthermore, while the back cover makes the assassination seem like the climax to the story, in the actual book it is not even a third of the way through the story and
feels to me like more of a step leading to later events then the most vital point
in the tale.
No comments:
Post a Comment