Gus - Once upon a time...zzzzzzzz

Did you ever have a book that you were really looking forward to reading, that you just can't get into for whatever reason? Maybe it's the author's writing style, maybe it's the setting, maybe it's the fact that you keep forgetting to read the book because you got another at the same time. Maybe it's that you tend to start reading too late and keep drooling on the pages. Etc. etc. and so on.

Having the experience with one of David Drake's books. Pretty sure it's a combination of the "reading too late" and coming down off Craig DiLouie's "The Infection," which is one of my favorite zombie apocalypse stories that I've read. I also have no idea what the hell is going on in the scene I just read. That's a bit of an issue too; the changes between scenery feel a bit jarring sometimes, and other times I don't notice that we have a different cast in the room now. And the room is now in space.

But I'm going to keep reading because the book has a very interesting moral ambiguity to it - you want to root for the main characters because they seem likable and, after all, they're the ones you're viewing this world through. At the same time, it's quite apparent that the employers of the mercenary company you're following--this is military science fiction--are less than moral guys. It paints the whole story line, at least in the beginning, in very nice shades of gray. Characters and stories are much more interesting when they're three dimensional, and it always really appeals to me when I read a book that is a good story where there isn't a black-and-white approach to the plot.

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Watch Land of the Dead. It was great, and I'm normally a very skeptical fan of Romero's later works. Hopper is excellent in it, and it's got a great "this is really screwed up" post-apoc vibe.