Marduk's Rebellion: Book 1 of the War in Heaven Paperback – 1 January 2013

I don't read much Sci Fi (I tend to read more fantasy), but a friend recommended this book so I had to check it out. I also LOVE to support new authors, so this was an easy buy for me.My favorite thing about the book was the incredibly strong female protagonist. There are not enough of these and I enjoyed the refreshing feel of it. I really liked the perspective used by the author and I thought it brought the reader to identify more closely with the story. I liked the feeling of being "right there." I also liked how the author wove the story, giving just enough information without an info dump.I also thought the author did a great job giving a bit of personality to the computer programs used in the story.Mallory is a fully developed character that just jumped off the page. The action was well paced and storyline satisfying. I enjoyed the read and heartily recommend it to others.In any case - a good read! Keep writing Jenn! I'm looking forward to your next book.

Like other reviews of this book, I don't want to spoil your reading pleasure by discussing any of it in detail. But here are a few words that come to mind after having read the book: fun, irreverent, heroic, creative, very fast paced (rarely slows to catch its breath). Lyons also does an amazing job of slowly creating the truly seamless details that comprise this future world. She's an excellent storyteller, each page draws you in deeper and fuels your curiosity about what will come next (i.e., it's hard to put down). I thoroughly enjoy her prose; she takes great care choosing each word, building each sentence, each paragraph and chapter. Cannot wait for the next installment.

Jenn Lyons uses words the way a master chef uses spices. I grabbed this as soon as I saw it was available, and savored every 'bite' of it. :) It did not disappoint. Jenn's writing resonates with me, and draws me in. Her world-creation is exquisite: She brings it to effortless life in a way that gives you just enough to paint luminous pictures in the mind's eye, but without getting bogged down in too much. I hate reviews that give away the plot, so I won't speak to that at all -- just that when I put this one down at last, I was satisfied but eager for the next in the series. :)

I forced myself to stay with it to 50% but that was all I could take. WAY too many characters to remember and most of them didn't contribute to the story line. As far as the sci-fi went, there wasn't much and what there was did nothing for the story either, it could have been written with sailing ships and politics of those times.

... and utterly intolerable. Sigh.Humanity got conquered by a foreign race who are convinced of their racial superiority; or at least that's the story. There's multiple conspiracies, mental manipulations, lies, betrayals etc pp. It's all quite fun.The heroine is a bit of a pseudo-Mary Sue; fantastic fighter and genius on top, but there's explanations for that. Unfortunately, like so often, the plot isn't good at convincing me that it's actually "true". She has a tendency to ultimate loose and stupidly walk into traps every step along the path. How she possibly could have survived until the beginning of the book is beyond me.... but, frankly, that's fairly normal for this type of novel, and with a little suspension of disbelief works well enough. Let's just say the author is right, she's a genius, just one that has a really bad day for the duration of the book, and move on.What drove me up (and down) multiple walls was the heroine and her love interests. I get it, honestly, I do. Prude damsels waiting for prince charming are out. It's a good thing heroine are all sexually empowered woman and such. But ever heard of "overcompensating"? Handsome male bodyguard she wouldn't mind getting to know closer - she only meets him for two minutes, but that's of course no argument. She has a crush on her gay childhood-friend. He dies, but that only leads to sleeping with some random "pirate" guy she finds attractive. That leads nowhere, but she's immediately developing another crush on a handsome police officer who technically was fighting on the other side for the entire duration of the war, but who cares about that? I mean, since she also has a crush on her father-figure-slash-torturer/teacher alien-assassin acquaintance, who has no qualms about killing her. Oh, and she'd probably also sleep with the husband of her dead friend, if given the opportunity.So basically every semi-eligible male that's in the book. At least she isn't one of those "pseudo-bi" characters, so she isn't infatuated with the entire female cast as well (there aren't many of those, between all of her love interests, anyway).Sigh. Supposedly, she's this highly trained, highly competed, highly professional trust-no-one agent. This somehow translated to behaving like a teen with a very bad case of hormones through the entirety of the novel. Who cares about the fate of humanity when you have to decide which of the psychopathic people you know you sleep with? Right in the middle of a count-down to an exploding space station you're on?It's a travesty, but I'm sure a certain type of audience will love it.