Krazykiwi @ Kiwitopia

This book is quite incredible for one reason: It manages to cram ancient aliens, vampires, werewolves (and werecats and werebears), stargates, zombies, post-apocalyptic militia style resistance and systemised enemy collaboration all into one book and have it somehow hang together. It occurs to me this is more or less the plot of Stargate combined with the plot of Falling Skies, with added vampires. 

As an actual read, not so incredible. Solid enough, I'd even say the writing is a cut above average and this is the kind of thing I'd probably pick up at the library, but not keep buying. 

But it's got some issues. It's quite episodic, we follow the protagonist over several years, but the first 2/3 of the book consists of fairly separate episodes in his life, often involving a whole new cast of players. Actually this didn't bother me that much, but some readers might find it jarring switching to an entirely new story every other chapter.

It's a bit infodumpy in places - let's randomly have the character sit in for a lecture for a whole chapter, in order to get some exposition done. Or no, let's have him read a book explaining what we know about the invading aliens for a half a chapter this time, in order to get some more exposition done. For info-dumping, it's fairly well done, but it's still blatant infodumping. The odd thing is it does a great job in the beginning dropping you into the action, building backstory organically, and then it's several chapters in and wham, let's just go all "As you know, Bob", so I was actually disappointed when I hit that part.

Of course the protagonist is mister wonderful, the most sensitive guy ever, smartest, fightingest, bestest tactical thinker, with a magic ability nobody else has, promoted to officer on his first day blah blah blah.

It somehow kept me reading, because despite all this, the protagonist is fairly likeable, and the author writes pretty good dialogue and action, between the infodumps, is not only well done but easy to follow.