Customer Reviews

Temporary Duty

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(42)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I came upon this while browsing around during a slow time of day. At first I was hesitant due to the fact that the Product description is incredibly useless, but I took a chance with the book and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The book is about two enlisted men going to space. Their interactions with the officers who command the rest of the detachment and the alien crew. This is not a military action book, while there are some action scenes they are short and mostly used as ways to meet new people. This is more a book about peaceful trade and exploration.

The main character is interesting and it was fun to watch his development throughout the book. The supporting characters were enjoyable and fulfilled their roles being easy to dislike if that was their role.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone that enjoyed books such as The Solar Clipper Trader Tales.
[...]

As the other reviewers have said, i picked this book not knowing exactly what to expect (there is an incredable amount of sci-fi sh** on kindle). while a little slow in spots, he does a fine job. The characters are believable, the science is good, and he writes a believable near future of the U.S.
As the others said, i will not give away the storyline but I do say, buy it and read it. I have been reading sci-fi since the first Ace double book and have a very low cut-off for bad writing. This is good. Buy it, The auther is on my buy list and I wait for the next in the series.

As with others I was not sure about buying this book as there was only
a one line decription. If this was changed I think alot more would sell.
This is an interesting story of a young low rank Navy guy assigned
to a spaceship from afar after first contact. He and his friend were sent
to prepare for a flight group. They were to learn the language and get
things ready.
Meeting new aliens at each new stop adds interesting folks. The whole
trip is 2 years and does not turn out as everyone expected. I don't
want to give away any of the plot.
As an avid SciFi reader I applaud the author and wait for Ric Locke
to add another to the Amazon list. I don't do 5 star often either.
Thanks Ric.

The premise of Temporary Duty is interesting. It tells of humans in contact with aliens, but from a point-of-view of the lower-echelon worker-bees, in this case, enlisted sailors. However, the potential of the story never really develops.

John Peters and Kevin Todd are two lower-ranking sailors who are suddenly sent to an alien ship which has appeared over the US and has invited humans to board in order to create trade for whatever humans can offer. The two sailors are ordered to prepare the ship for the arrival of a Navy squadron of Hornets and Tomcats, which will be the main human offering.

Peters and Todd have no real briefing on what they are supposed to do, but they get on with the tasks, getting to know the alien crew as well as prep for the arrival of the squadron. For the rest of this rather lengthy story, the ship travels to various planets where most are amazed b the prowess and technology of the humans. A few battles ensue, Peters and Todd try to deal with buffoonish officers while endearing themselves to the aliens, and interspecies sex abounds.

But the tale just has too many holes in it to be believable.

One glaring example is that the aliens are almost human, as are most beings of the "kree." The various peoples of this section of space are very similar in looks, what they can eat, how they think, how they live (every planet has resorts with bars which serve beer, for example), and using gestures like using a thumbs up. The different beings are barely more different than say a Japanese factory worker and a Brazilian lumberjack. This is really beyond belief, but taking the "kree" origin to heart, it could be almost accepted. However, then there are huge differences. Despite the traders and the humans being so alike, they have huge diversionary differences such as the trader's gender roles. The "males" have very human female-like bodies and accept the "female's" eggs being deposited into their bodies where they go through pregnancy and give birth, then probably nurse the children. The "females" have human male-like genitalia which deposit the eggs. Yet, even with this difference, the "males" of the traders and the males of the humans seem to enjoy sex together.

Another huge problem for me is that while the traders use ships provided for them by the "Makers," they have no concept of radios nor computers. A radio is a very simple concept, so I doubt very much that a ship which can travel between stars cannot communicate other than by shouting at each other. When the smaller shuttle craft or Navy planes leave the ship, they navigate by sight to and from the ship as there are no computers, radar, or other means to get around. Yet the ships can navigate between stars, and without computers?

Characterizations are very primitive. All the Navy officers are arrogant idiots who have nothing but disregard for the enlisted sailors. I know many, many Naval aviators, and while many have that swagger, almost all have a deep respect for their enlisted crews (it doesn't pay to get the sailors who keep your plane in the air upset at you. None ignore enlisted sailors when that sailor has experience in a certain subject as every officer in the book save one does. And no officer who has just been taken off flight status to be made an Landing Signal Officer is going to try to learn the space version of the landing gear while disregarding what the existing crew tells him.

You can summarize the book as officers, bad; chiefs, bad; enlisted, good; aliens, good; IRS, bad.

For a mission of this importance, the US government would have vetted the humans very closely. Both Peters and Todd would have been vetted instead of just being sent up to the ship. And the squadron would have been vetted, too. Only the best of the best would have been selected, and they certainly would not have come onboard a spaceship telling the traders just what they would do and not do. And a mere commander would certainly not have been the senior person sent, and as this was a trade mission, the senior person would not be a pilot but a diplomat.

I have problems with the Tomcats and Hornets as well. Why pick 100-year-old aircraft unless it is because that is what the author is familiar? With the alien propulsion system installed which makes the plane viable in space, you could have picked a Chevy SUV and at least flown around in comfort. Why pick a plane whose wings limit the number of aircraft in the spaceships hanger bays? And why keep touting the aerodynamics when that mean nothing in space?

Sex, while never graphic, is constant in the book, and rather teenager-like. When the enlisted see a female officer in a tight flight suit, they get erections. All the aliens seem to be sexual opportunities. Pretty much all the female characters, human and alien, are "hot" babes. And Peters had two human-like aliens fall in love and move in with him, where to Peters delight, one likes to run around his stateroom nude. It is all a 15-year-old boy's fantasy.

The protagonist was weak as well, poorly developed. Speaking with an exaggerated West Virginia banter, he sounds dumb, but is evidently very smart. We know that because we are told he is smart, not because he demonstrates it. His successes are mostly due to blind luck.

With a multitide of trips to the mess hall, and too many officers with a "rictus of rage," I thought the repetition of certain things was mind-numbing. The book could have used some serious editing to cut the length and make it a more concise story.

The book isn't all bad. And at $2.99 for the Kindle version, it certainly won't break the bank. It is just that the book could have been so much better.

Alien traders, frustrated with dealing with politicians and officers, hire on a pair of enlisted sailors to see if regular folk have more sense than suits. Peters and Todd, both US Navy enlisted personnel, are sent "TDY" to help set up spaces for the Navy squadron that an enterprising Captain got the traders to take along.

The alien spaceship, our boys realize, is a surplus carrier, and while the aliens may be pretty good traders, it's clear that they don't know much about maintenance, nor do they have any microelectronics technology. Though its obvious from the start that the two groups have a lot to offer each other, the military hierarchy can't get out of its own way long enough to make it happen.

Fortunately Peters and Todd's orders are just vague enough to give them enough rope to tie things up in a nice package for both parties, if they don't hang themselves first.

Temporary Duty is a pretty good read, and considering the price it's a great value. With a bit of work this could have been an excellent first book, or actually, it could have expanded into a very solid trilogy, but as it is the story lurches sideways halfway through the book rather than resolve the very real conflicts that the author has set up.

Temporary Duty is self published, and its rough edges make that no surprise. If Ric had worked with an editor, or more seasoned author, he would have come out with a book that hung together better, but even as it is, there's a lot of good there.

Keep writing Ric!

Ernest Lilley
[...]

The book is a fairly standard story of humans venturing out into the galaxy under the guidance of another race (think Alan Dean Foster's Damned trilogy, or John Ringo's A Hymn Before Battle). Like those stories the primary contact point is the human military, unlike those stories there is no significant "bad guys" in the galaxy which makes this more a mercantile tale (a la the Solar Clipper series by Nathan Lowell).

While the book starts acceptably, by the end it degenerates into what's either an author wish fulfilment fantasy or a schlocky sci-fi rip off. In the last 20% of the book:
1. Women fall madly in love with the lead over less than a chapter.
2. The US government imprisons him because, despite any previous hints of this, it's apparently a bureaucratic parody of a government that could have been written by a Tea-party supporter.
3. A totally unforeshadowed revolution sweeps the US to restore sanity to government and bring the IRS back under control.
These things aren't bad in and of themselves (when done well), but here they're so poorly reasoned, explained or dealt with that I lost all connection to or interest in the book.

The space opera and trader rags-to-riches story is good while it lasts. Most of the anachronisms (Hornets in space without long-distance communications, computers, and networking?) actually have support in the text. Imagine a galactic civilization living off the crumbs from automated factories that nobody know how to fix or improve, perhaps?

But the authority complex kills the book. Every chief, officer, or other human authority figure is criminally negligent, incompetent, and mad for rank above all else. This degenerates to ludicrous levels towards the end of the book, except for the protgonist, for whom power is not a corrupting influence. This treatment is, at best, ham-handed, and almost infantile.

Which is too bad -- if the book was shorter, and actually delivered on the promise of the first half with an interesting build-up, it could have been a five.

I really enjoyed this book for a while. As one reviewer mentioned, it did throw a lot of navy terminology at me, and I had to google/wikipedia a few things to figure out what was going on, but I don't mind a book testing me that way. And I really did like peters; the hillbilly accent writing got a little bit grating at times, but not enough to tone down what was otherwise a good story.

Until about 85% of the way through.

At that point, I can only assume the author experienced a religious conversion to scientology. I can come up with no other explanation for why the author would decide that a single traumatic experience would convert the protagonist from a likeable, reasonable, and responsible gentleman into some sort of supposedly-likeable caricature of L.Ron Hubbard mixed with James T. Kirk and a bit of James bond. The females in the story at one point seem to be reasonably intelligent beings, then suddenly they're either pliant sexual subordinates (such as the protagonist's near-mindless baby factories, who seem to possess only enough intelligence to endlessly worship him) or antagonists (such as the female officer who is humiliated and accused of being a sexually abusive lesbian, or the IRS agent who is willing to have Washington turned to a crater because a man has bested her).

The story is fantastic, but in an honestly fun and exciting way for the majority of the book. Then the above misogyny gets in the way, and the story devolves into incomprehensible anti-governmental gibberish. Suddenly we go from a perfectly followable space opera about alien worlds and galaxy-spanning conspiracies into some completely mind-numbing conflict that seems to relate to the authors political perspectives than anything I've read about the story so far. Then, to get out of that mess, the author throws a deus ex machina out there to save the protagonist from the EEEEEEVIL gub'mint. No clue exactly how it worked, since the author doesn't bother to try to explain where these new characters or plot developments came from.

It's rather sad, really; the author has such capacity. he apparently just slipped into incomprehensible ramblings at the end, much to the detriment of his rather nice story.

That, btw,

No spoilers, but the last quarter of the book could not have been predicted from the earlier parts. In fact, the whole style changes from the imagined minutiae of a space voyage to sweeping themes and conclusions.
I also found the class hatred theme annoying and a little unbelievable, much less how the heroes could have grown in the culture described - and that undermines the ability to believe in the story.
In sum, I found the book adequate but disappointing.

this thing has plot holes you could fly these starship through. which with enough suspension of disbelief is actually manageable.

but the whole "governments are superfluous if not evil" schtick is just tiresome.

locke's opinion of people is apparently quite low since they can't seem to have an original thought except for marty stu and his henchmen.

and the whole sex slaves falling in love with their rescuer is just sickening.