I expected this book to be another boring novelization, but I was very surprised to find myself engaged in a thematically rich story about human nature on a distant world.The author has taken a risk by centering most of the book around one key battle, but the battle is made somewhat powerful and intriguing by the many lives it affects and the way it comes about. I also found the battle sequences to be quite compelling and the final conclusion surprising.
Fans of the game will like this book, I think. The author takes risks with his characters, and the world they inhabit is far from stagnant, unliek some of the star wars and star trek style books.
This book is an admirable endevour to create a book based on an epic game such as Alpha Centauri, sounded to me like the makings of a great book, however I was sincerely disappointed. The book is obviously aimed at those fans of the game who want to read an atmospheric account of what happens in the game. Instead of introducing new and interesting angles and facets to this great game, the book produces no more than a blow by blow account of what happens in the game with a few basic superficial subplots thrown in. It starts of great with a good description of making a new home on a foreign world, from the perspective of two of the "factions" and quickly declines, once the battles begin, to single dialogues of people saying run up this hill and down this hill. The constant shift from faction to faction has a tendency to confuse the reader, especially during the long arduos battles. The battle scenes which take up most of the book, are poorely written and too long. There is little description, and relies too heavily on dialogue to carry the thin plot line. This would have been suitable for a movie script however it doesn't work when it is put down onto paper.
Bearing in mind the rich universe that is Alpha Centauri, I think that more time could have been devoted to discovering more about the world and the other people on it. There were several facets which were sadly left unexplored, which hopefully they will investigate in future books.
Overall as a alpha centauri game veteren I would rate this book as average to poor recreation of what happened in the game. I felt cheated as most of the book (nearly half) is devoted to a single battle, the cause of which is held together by very weak plotlines.
This book would probably be useful for diverting an addicted gamer away from playing alpha centauri however my advice to a young adult looking for an interesting book to read,is that they should probably pass this one over.
