Good read, some problems.
589222
The author is a great historian.  Who knew that the commander of Ft. Sumter was named Robert Anderson, and 101 years later, Robert Anderson was the name of the pilot of a spy plane shot down over Cuba.  The author knows his history of the time period, thats for sure.  I do find fault with his work in two areas.  He relies too much on the JFK movie idea that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't buy the rifle, and couldn't shoot.  His wife has said he did have a rifle in the garage, and being a Marine, he did know how to shoot.  The other problem i have with some JFK conspiracy theorists, is their deification of the man.  JFK was no heroic figure riding a white horse, he had many faults, and abused his power.  But other than that, I enjoyed the book, and will read his other JFK works.
4377769
This was a good read overall. Some spots where more or better editing is needed. Good story line. Interesting characters. Not easy for me to read "English-speaking". Some funny spots.
3955857
This author is clearly quite talented. Overall I liked this book, but it had a couple issues that cut into the enjoyment.

1. Tool, over time, became way too knowledgeable about humans: their history, their philosophy, their attitudes, how to manipulate them. This simply would not have been in his background given his reason for existence.
<SPOILER ALERT>
2. The army faction (UPF?)which ambushes Tool does so using a large number of tranquilizer darts. I found it entirely too convenient for them to come up with this ammunition, the weapons to deliver it considering the state of the drowned cities as well as the lack of more common equipment.
3. The whole ending battle sequence seemed a little too deus-ex-machina.
4353972
Good read, the only drawback is that the author tries to do too much with the same scenario over and over.
3626184
Overall I enjoyed the book and will be picking up the next one. There were a few things that were annoying, some things were drawn out way to much, the hidden fleet was a little over the top. Overall it was still a good read...
3737054
So, I like the plot and the characters, and it is definitely worth reading. However, there multiple distracting grammar, punctuation, switching from first to third person errors that somewhat disrupted the flow of the book. I would have probably given this book four stars otherwise. It was still sweet, fun, and had a good back story.
1576653
This was mostly an enjoyable read for a first novel by a new author. The book was, for the most part, competently written with a decent plot, realistic sci-fi dialog, and well-developed characters. Much better than a bunch of other free downloads (I got it on special offer).

There were a few problems and I hope the author reads this review and addresses these in his future works (which he should definitely produce).
1) Misunderstanding of future tense. There are a few sentences that were irritating scattered infrequently throughout the book. For example: So, is this how its going to be, Commander? Horatio said, when he felt he could speak again without fear that his voice WILL tremble." [emphasis mine]. The verb here should be "would tremble". Minor annoyance.
2) I couldn't quite understand the need for the Mindguards so the plot was not well motivated for me. Mindguards protect clients' secrets from telepathy. Telepathy is illegal and rare throughout civilization, except in the desert areas (kind of criminal zones in the galaxy). So, where does this traveling troupe go with their client? The Desert. That made no sense until the last ten percent of the book. Which made me think, "Why would the rest of civilization need Mindguards? And especially so much as to develop nanotech Mindguards?" The author should have had telepathy as a bigger threat. When it came to the action, the Mindguards fell to good ol' fashioned fists, knives and guns real quickly.

But, after those little issues, the book was an enjoyable enough read. Not mind-bending (pardon the pun) but entertaining.
2649258
I finished the book and enjoyed it. At times, though, it seemed to not run on all cylinders ( timing off?).
1141367
Good story, but there were times, especially early on, when it seemed disjointed. Overall, pretty good, and I will read more from this author.
3000789
The premise was pretty great and was put together pretty well in the book. There were some parts that could have been better expanded upon and a few that could have maybe been discarded. Overall it was a good read.
I'd recommend a quick edit and review by the author though, some simple mistakes of words put twice and such, but there were a few sentences where words were left out, changing the meanings. Not hard to re read those sentences and the surrounding ones to figure it out though, so not a big deal over all.

Look forward to seeing what this author does the more he writes.
2445405
Very enjoyable read, but the can sometimes get too winding and circuitous. One can conceivably squeeze all the material in this book into a book rough two thirds as long.
2282868
In conceptualization this book is on target considering today's political climate. However with all the flash forwards and backwards it is difficult to maintain continuity. At times it felt like I was reading 2-3 books at the same time. The other thing that bothered me was the fact that the formatting was erratic and in several cases paragraphs were repeated. An interesting read with bad "flow".
2112240
The book has many questions as you read along,  which can be frustrating. You get a little piece here, another piece there,  and many of them don't seem to fit together. But it all works out in the end.
4096513
This book was a captivating read, with a plot full of well-formed and detailed characters. It was easy to get lost in and the idea of the book is very creative. However, I have some problems with it.
1. Word errors. There/their/they're and the like were misused sometimes.
2. Even though they are defended, this presents being gay as being a fool.
3. Swearing, if sporadic.
1928541
Overall a good read and I recommend it.

What kept it from being a VERY good read was a plot device the author employed to get the book to his desired resolution.  Two cops, who had previously been established as very competent, do something so colossally dumb that when I read it, I knew what the author was doing.  He needed his story to go in a certain direction, and I guess this was the only or most convenient way he could think of to get there.

That said, once I got over this, I still enjoyed the book.
1366756
I really enjoyed this book for the most part.  It had a good pace and I felt it did a nice job of exposing a lot of the unfairness in the legal system, especially when dealing with race and socioeconomic class.  I didn't feel that Malik's mother's response to his arrest was over the top and truly felt her fear, panic, and feeling of helplessness.

There were two things that bothered me though.
1. There is no evidence against Malik and even a public defender would have been able to keep this out of court.
2. (Trying not to give spoilers) The usage of the Endangered Species Act was not believable. First off, black men ar not a species.  Second, humans are nowhere close to endangered. This argument would have never flown in court.

Overall, I liked the book, but I would have really liked to see the argument for his release to have been different.
3143525
The author has certainly done some serious research. I tended to get a little lost (needed a program to tell the players - everyone has nearly the same name, people identified by their titles as opposed to their names, and titles changed hands due to deaths, attaintures [sic], and the whim of the King). I was unhappy that the story did not continue into the reign of Richard III (otherwise known as Duke of Gloucester), and the author is obviously not a fan of R III (I'm a Ricardian). A very good read, but with flaws.