Customer Reviews

Colonel (Dirigent Mercenary Corps)

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I enjoyed reading the series. It did not draw me in as much as the "Hope" series of David Feintuch, but I did enjoy the action and decisions of Lon Nolan. My greatest regret is that I was looking forward to General. I assumed since the General does not go out on contract, that the planet Dirigent would be attacked. Since Lon would be head of the military and state he would have to direct planetary resources as well as consider bringing men back already on contract. I am not sure why Mr. Shelly decided to end with Colonel.

I enjoyed the Lon Nolan series and bought all of the books, even though they sometimes made you wonder why such a low tech approach to warfare was used. This is fiction after all so I don't get too picky. Most of this book was decent but the ending seemed so rushed. Like others, I expected there to be a book called General to finish the series, and was really looking forward to it since it would have involved an attack on Dirigent (the mercs home planet.) It seems like at the last minute Shelly decided not to do this and wrapped up the entire future of Lon in a few pages. That part sorely dissapointed me. I feel there is nothing worse than to end on a bad note, you tend to remember that more than what you enjoyed about the series and makes me not all that eager to read his other books. Too bad, I tend to be a very loyal reader.

Despite the title, I must add that this is the best book in the overall Nolan sequence. He actually seems to have grown as a character, although only to the extent he is 2.1 dimensional rather than two dimensional. The combat seems a bit more sophisticated, actually employing combined arms for a change. The best possible book in the series, the "General", is the one that will not be written. Here we could have seen the implications of a military officer as head of state, grappling with tough decisions that effect soldiers and civilians alike and perhaps offered a broader glimpse of politics and foreign relations in Shelley's series universe. Unfortunately that topic is dealt with in a paragraph.