i’ve read tom clancy stuff before, and i’ve even read netforce stuff before, so i thought this would be a fun, light read. i was wrong.

so it turns out that this is a franchise now. i would call it ghost written, but they say up front who the writers are. but this book relies way too much on that name. the book could have easily been 100 pages shorter. it has way too much “internal reflection” on wasted pages like a general going through an obstacle course and his inner monologue as he does it. all of that stuff is wasted as there’s no psychological payoff during or after the climax. the action could be ok if it were more succinct and suspenseful. instead, it’s overstated and takes way too long to develop. also, the virtual reality scenarios in this book are totally bogus and ridiculous. there’s no way that translating standard code into so-called “paradigms” or representations would be meaningful or even helpful in the way that they’re written in this book.

in short, this will be the last netforce book i’ll read, and i want my time and money back. oh well, i guess riding on a brand name means brand is more important than quality.