{"id":440,"date":"2017-05-04T16:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T22:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=440"},"modified":"2017-09-10T16:42:23","modified_gmt":"2017-09-10T22:42:23","slug":"book-the-ares-weapon-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2017\/05\/04\/book-the-ares-weapon-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Ares Weapon (2016)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheThe Ares Weapon
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2016
\nAuthor: D.M. Pruden
\nLength: 268 pages<\/p>\n

***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY***<\/p>\n

The sci-fi genre is interesting in that it has almost limitless possibilities, but the physics of our universe usually constrains the stories, so they are at least somewhat believable. As a result, and in part due to our past and current space-travel capabilities, the genre has become rather stale. Unfortunately, this is also because a few franchises dominate the landscape and any work that seems similar to it are deemed derivative. Consequently, I have read a number of almost interchangeable sci-fi stories, and The Ares Weapon<\/em> is just one of them.<\/p>\n

While the occasional proofreading or formatting error is distracting in this story, much of my qualms lie with the characters\u2019 decisions and motivations. Instead of making sense, the decisions sometimes seem to merely exist only to move the plot along to a pre-determined path the author wanted to take. Similarly, the motivations don\u2019t seem to make sense, especially with some of the more ancillary characters. And while the main character was engaging and interesting, the almost random switch over to a third-person perspective to fill in information via the \u201cRoman\u201d characters (who were incredibly out of place in this universe, in my opinion) was jarring and disrupted the exciting flow of the story.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned earlier in this review, there are plenty of stories just like The Ares Weapon<\/em>. While it\u2019s not as good as The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper<\/a><\/em> series by Nathan Lowell, it\u2019s certainly better than Commanding the Red Lotus<\/a><\/em>. I think today\u2019s modern sci-fi authors are too focused on the \u201con the ship\u201d part of the story, and not the \u201con planet\u201d sections which have made franchises like Star Wars<\/em> and Star Trek<\/em> so popular. Case in point: this first book in The Mars Ascendant<\/em> series spends almost no time on Mars at all, even if it hints at eventually getting there in later books.<\/p>\n

Just another spaceship crew constrained to their spaceships, I give The Ares Weapon<\/em> 3.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong>\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong>\u00a0\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ares Weapon Year: 2016 Author: D.M. Pruden Length: 268 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY*** The sci-fi genre is interesting in that it has almost limitless possibilities, but the physics of our universe usually constrains the stories, so they are at least somewhat believable. As a result, and in part due […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,54],"tags":[9,55,558,97,308,8,235,559,557],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-book","tag-9","tag-book","tag-d-m-pruden","tag-giveaway","tag-goodreads-giveaway","tag-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-the-ares-weapon","tag-the-mars-ascendant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":809,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}