Gods of War: The Last Marines, Book 1

Slower start but strong finish. I can’t wait to read second book. Great idea and rebellion against communist empire. Thumbs up.

As other reviewers have said, the first half of this book is a little rough to get through. At one or two points, I was unsure whether I was interested enough to continue. But once you get past the half way mark, when the story lines start to converge, things get really good and all the set ups pay off. The world building is good and the characters are well written and consistent.Already downloaded the second to read and am looking forward to starting it.

This is one of the better book's I've read recently. It has a strong cast, plenty of action and enough science to keep it interesting. The author manages to put the reader right in the middle of the action.

Entertaining story line, engaging characters. It takes time to become accustomed to the author’s switching between the points of view of the principal characters but well worth the effort. I look forward to the next novel in the series.

I really enjoyed this book. Plenty of action, well written characters, and just the right amount of humor. Mathison is a noble and good leader that finds himself in a horrible situation. Stathis is annoying at first, but he becomes really funny as the book goes on. The only thing I wasn't a huge fan of was the abrupt transition to the future. The Marines are getting ready to board the shuttle that will take them to Space, and then the next chapter takes place 800 years later with an entirely new set of characters. I think there's a way to still have this transition but not have it be so sudden or jarring and make people think they're missing something. Can't wait to start in on book 2

While the opening battle scene on Earth is full of tension, it seems a bit long and the layout of the territory needs more description or a map showing where the various forces are deployed. I felt a bit lost in understanding which group was located where doing what. The emotional impact comes through powerfully, though, and it sets up the protagonists’ valor and capabilities to be believable in the space battles that occur later on in the book.The author skips over the part where the American soldiers are put in stasis in order to change POV to a new set of military-trained elite fighters in the future who speak another language (based on Finnish). It’s an abrupt transition that is not for weak-minded readers. It takes perseverance to convert the new jargon into English jargon, but the words become familiar after awhile. The location of the new soldiers needs more initial set-up as it isn’t clear at first that they are all on the ground. The author could take some more time to create an alien world so the book feels more sci-if.The final setting, where the two groups of fighters converge, is very intense. Throughout the book, there is a lot of violence and killing, some brief gory details, a lot of sex jokes and teasing, some body function humor, some profanity, and artificial intelligence! The momentum of the story builds to a mini climax with aliens in the mix, and then the plot winds down for a brief respite for the heroes.The second book promises to be full of more fighting, inside jokes, and another layer of political intrigue.Overall, the writing is compelling. The characters are likable, and the reader wants them to succeed against terrible odds. There are a few mistakes here and there, but they can be skipped over. The story ends at the 96% point; the rest is a glossary and teasers for other works by other authors.

A slow start of mixed vignettes that get stitched together later as the plot thickens……maddeningly free of resolution — so you will need to anticipate more purchases.Which I am making right now.

Gods of War is an outstanding military science fiction story. I liked the concurrent plot lines. I look forward to reading the next installment.

This book started just a few decades from now & I had high hopes because the author was in the military, but it turned into a zombie attack part way through, I don’t think I will buy anymore in this series.

Not a bad book, but it could be 30% shorter.First thing, the blurb does an awful job of telling you what this book is about. The story starts way before the events described in it, told in a very slow way, causing the second problem this book has, repetition.This book is extremely repetitive. There are only so many ways of telling a private to shut up until it stops being funny. The internal monologue of some characters also get super repetitive, to the point that it feels like they are talking/thinking in circles and it drags on and on...Around the 50% mark the story picks up though and that's when it gets good. If the book was just the second half, maybe some small chunks of the first one for context and character depth, this could easily be a 5 star rating, but I'm taking it down to 3 when you consider how slow, boring and repetitive the first half is.The ending is good though and promises a good continuation of the story, so it has me hooked.

A good read I really enjoyed and can thoroughly recommend you give it a try like I did. Sometimes trying something new can give you something new you end having a one of your favourite.Read and enjoy

I enjoyed this. Lots of action and the beginning confused me when the timeline jumped but that eventually worked into the story. Nice world building and some and some annoying characters that grow on you eventually. Worth reading more of the books

A little slow to start but it ended up as a good prestory set up am going to read the rest of the series hope it keeps going