Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet [Mass Market Paperback]

Graham Sharp Paul (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 23, 2010 | Series: Helfort's War (Book 4)

It was insane, it was suicidal, it was wrong—
and by God he was going to do it.
 
The Hammer Worlds have Helfort exactly where they want him. The ultimatum is brutal and precise. Unless the Federated hero surrenders, the Hammer World’s prisoner Anna Cheung—the only woman Helfort has ever loved—will be handed over to a bunch of depraved troopers to be violated, then executed by firing squad.

Helfort can obey, or he can do what the crew proposes: sail his three frontline dreadnoughts into the Hammers’ stronghold Commitment Planet, liberate Anna and the rest of the POWs held captive there, and continue the fight in the jaws of the enemy. Helfort’s decision? Bring it on!

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Bursts off the page like a tactical nuke.”—John Birmingham, author of After America, on Helfort’s War: The Battle at the Moons of Hell

About the Author

Graham Sharp Paul, born in Sri Lanka, received an honors degree in archaeology and anthropology from Cambridge University and an MBA from Macquarie University. He joined the Royal Navy in 1972, qualifying as a mine warfare and clearance diving officer before reaching the rank of lieutenant commander with the Navy’s mine warfare flotilla. In 1983 he transferred to the Royal Australian Navy, serving in its Trials & Assessments Unit and Clearance Diving School before transferring to civilian life in 1987. Paul worked for two Australian companies in the banking and media sectors before setting up his own business development and corporate finance consultancy in 1991. Over the next twelve years he worked on a worldwide range of projects. In 2003 he gave up corporate life to write full-time. He is also the author of The Battle at the Moons of Hell, The Battle of the Hammer Worlds, and The Battle of Devastation Reef, the first three novels in his Helfort’s War series. Paul has three sons and lives in Sydney with his wife, Vicki.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey; Original edition (November 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345513711
• ISBN-13: 978-0345513717
• Product Dimensions: 4.1 x 1 x 7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #265,258 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka (then called Ceylon).

Educated at the Hill School in Nuwara Eliya before completing my secondary education at Glenalmond School in Scotland, then on to Cambridge University before joining the Royal Navy. Why the navy? Simple. From the day I started diving as a 16-year-old in Trincomalee, I wanted to be a diver and, when it comes to the business of military diving, the Royal Navy was the best.

Migrated to Australia with my wife and three sons in 1983 by transferring to the Royal Australian Navy (best decision I ever made) before moving into a new career in corporate finance in 1988. Retired from what was a stressful if well paid business in 2003. Now I write military science fiction in between diving, which is - after my wife, my three boys, and my two granddaughters - my greatest passion.

Why write sci-fi? Well, living next door to Arthur C. Clarke in Colombo had a lot to do with that. The first SF book I ever read - thanks Mum - was his "Fall of Moondust". It captured my imagination in a way no other book ever has. Thanks to that book, I still look to the stars and will write SF for so long as there is a publisher willing to back me.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Who talks to their soulmate like that?, January 18, 2011

By 

James S. Goydos (NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY, US) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (Mass Market Paperback)

I've been a fan of the Helfort series since I finished the first book in one long all-night read. I was really looking forward to this installment and bought it as soon as it was available. All-in-all this is a good continuation to the story but not a great read. The main problem with this book was Michael's decent into incompetence, which is really annoying - the tactical genius and born leader from the first three books is reduced to a terrified rookie puking at the site of a dead soldier (even after witnessing spacers with rail gun injuries and floating body parts in the other three books) and the mediocre junior officer (Anna) is suddenly a hardened combat veteran after a couple of months in the field. Michael has been in numerous life or death situations with thousands of peoples' lives depending on his decisions - and Anna has to assign a corporal to babysit him during the last big battle? The guy calmly walked up to a police officer sitting in his office in the second book and kills him with a knife and then goes on to attack an entire enemy base and blow the place to pieces but he needs a babysitter when he goes out in the field a few months later?

How Anna treats Michael throughout most of the book is also a real problem for me. She can't meet him in the mess hall without making some demeaning remark - kind of like that annoying friend or co-worker that is always making childish remarks aimed at your manhood whenever they see you. Michael MUTINIED and faces a firing squad when he gets back to the Federation, was such an inspiring leader that almost all of his crew volunteers to mutiny with him, he devises one of the most daring and brilliant fleet maneuvers in history, and he maroons himself and his crew on the home planet of their hated enemy, all to save Anna from being raped and tortured to death and to repay him she takes every opportunity presented to her to insult and belittle him? And instead of putting her skills as a trained officer to work helping him devise another brilliant and inspired plan to bring the war to an end, she joins the infantry and leaves. This interplay between Anna and Michael is a very disappointing turn in the one romantic relationship of any consequence in the series.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, November 29, 2010

By 

Matthew Skinner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (Mass Market Paperback)

I was hoping this book would be more of the same as the first three but it is far from it. It goes from a "Space Opera" to a "Modern Ground Warfare" novel over the last half of the book and it's a long last half. The main battle at the end of the book lasted from about 70% (Kindle) to about the 92% mark. In many spots I found myself simply scanning and skipping many pages at once. A multi hour read for a single battle with only about 25% of it being dialog was the final straw for me. This book was such a drastic departure from what made the other 3 very good that I doubt I will be coming back for the other books.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Leaves a lot to be desired, January 4, 2011

By 

James M. Nelson "blacksmithn" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet (Mass Market Paperback)

I'm a fan of the first three books in this series, but this fourth one has two major flaws and one minor-- though extremely irritating-- one.

The first major flaw is character development-- there is almost none. Our hero, Michael Helfort, begins the story as a supposedly tortured soul, laboring under the explicit threat by DocSec (think SS and NKVD rolled into one) to his true love, Anna Cheung, who is held captive in a Hammer POW camp. Helfort is a man conflicted, torn between his duty as a Fleet officer and his need to rush to the rescue of his dearest darling. He ends the story as a supposedly tortured soul, caught on the horns of a dilemma of his own making, as he and all the folks he led into this daring rescue, along with all the folks he rescued, are caught up in the literally endless, grinding guerilla war that is the focus of the entire book. The other characters are so poorly drawn or briefly on stage as to be two dimensional caricatures.

The second major flaw is the dialog, which is even more tortured than Helfort's character. It rings false and hollow at every point, ultimately reading as though it was written by a high school English student with a C average and overblown literary pretensions.

Which brings me to the minor flaw which, after almost 400 pages, is cringe inducingly irritating. The two love birds, Michael Helfort and Anna Cheung, call each other by the first names in nearly every sentence of dialog. This seems relatively innocuous at first, but ultimately it's more grating than fingernails on a chalkboard--

"Anna, I'm goin to blow up that machine gun position."

"Michael, be careful."

"I will Anna."

"Thank you, Michael"

"You're welcome, Anna..."

"Well, Anna, I'm back."

"I'm glad you're safe, Michael."

"I appreciate your concern, Anna."

"I know, Michael."

AAGGGHHH!

Okay, it was an exaggeration, but only a modest one. These are two people, mind you, who are supposed to be wildly in love. There's nary a "sweetie" or "dear" to be found, only Anna this or Michael that. For variation-- if it can be called that-- and to prove they're angry or impassioned, it's Michael Helfort this and Anna Cheung that. PLEASE! After three previous books, dialog should improve, not devolve.

I wanted to like this book a lot more and, to be fair, it has some good points. The plot was intriguing and the action sequences I thought well written, in contrast to the execrable dialog, which earns it three stars in my universe.