After a slightly slow start this picked up to be a decent read. It was similar in quality to the first book. Fast paced pulp sci-fi with some cool technology. The slow start can be blammed on the fact that the first 15% of the book was spent with the characters recapping what they had done in the first book. That would have been great if I'd read the books a year apart, but since I went straight from the first to the second it left things a bit dull and frustrating. This picks up where we left off in Lords of the Middle Dark with Hawk and his band of misfits having escaped both Melchior and the solar system in the Universe ship they have stolen. In order to escape the attention of Master System they hide out in the Freebooters area of space. From there they seek to build contacts and allies from the space pirates and to identify the planets where the remaining 4 rings are located. The story had a bit of mystery and plenty of action, and was actually fairly engaging once it got going. It was great to meet some of the modified humans and see more of what life is like under Master System for the non-Earth humans. A few of the new characters added to the team stole the show. Especially former Melchior security chief Arnold Nagy. It should be interesting to see how things play out in third book.Rating: 3 stars.Audio Note: Jamie Du Pont MacKenzie did an OK job with this.
My review for "Pirates of the Thunder": “Don’t judge a book by the cover” I’m told, but that’s what I did many years ago with this one and it was a good choice. This was the first “real” out-of-high-school book I can remember purchasing. I was at Safeway and saw it on the rack and decided I’d give it a try, because it “looks” cool. Well, it was great, but I had to stop a couple chapters into it and go to the book store to find the book before it in the series so I knew how the story began (Didn’t occur to me then that the book with the cool cover was the second in the series). I enjoyed this story so much that it sparked my interest in reading books and gave me something to “compare” to when searching. Loved the epic struggle of the rag-tag group against the “system”. Great book for the Sci-fi reader! (but be smart and read “Lords of the Middle Dark” FIRST. :) )
