Control Point is a brilliant blend of military SF and Fantasy fiction. Think Andy McNab meets Trudi Canavan. I read it in two sittings and I can't wait for his next book. I really will be recommending this to all of my customers!

I did not enjoy this book at all. The tagline compares it to X-Men meets Black Hawk Down, which sounds awesome. The actual book however, is very badly written, with sub-plots that appear at random intervals. For example, half way through the book, the author decides to blame Native Americans for the problems (never mentioned them once before this) and it becomes a vital part of the plot! It's just naff.

I like - I really like - the world Myke Cole has created here in his debut: the use of magic in military strategy is a great idea, rich with potential that her generally uses very well indeed in the various battles and training montages (there's a lot of training, just be aware of that if you're expecting wall-to-wall carnage). What I don't like is his characters. Any of them. The problem is that none of them real even vaguely credible. We're in a world where magic is understood enough to be divided into different specialisms, for those skills to be nurtured by an organisation that understands it intimately...but everyone involved in this is so dangerously stupid that they really should have been shot on page one. And the moralising...oh, heaven preserve me from the moralising. This desire to see everything in black or white gets boring very quickly, and then continues for the rest of the book undimmed. There's a strong anti-military edge to all this, which strikes a discordant note given the author's own military service, and there seems to be a desire to see all sides of the argument while presenting each one in the simplest terms possible. Worst of all, though, is our protagonist Oscar Britton. A career military man who really doesn't seem to understand how the military works and bucks at the idea of simply obeying orders, a man who happily kills several people when told to (despite not liking having to take orders...) but is so opposed to the needless slaughter of one character that he openly brings about and participates in the killing of literally hundreds, who makes decisions that force his friends into a series of actions that we know would not be their own choice, and then is allowed to get out of it all with some sort of halo of brilliance around him. He is, without question, the singularly most repugnant and idiotic main character I've yet encountered. But the world is very good, Cole has done strong work in his imagining of a world where this might occur, and I like the background if not the actual focus (the military presence in the Source makes zero sense, for one). The action is inventively deployed if rather garbled at this first attempt, and although the idiocy of Oscar Britton is too all-encompassing to really take any joy in his adventures I intend to track down the second book at some point and see how Cole develops it all. Yup, I'm as confused about this as you are...

I did not enjoy this book at all. The tagline compares it to X-Men meets Black Hawk Down, which sounds awesome. The actual book however, is very badly written, with sub-plots that appear at random intervals. For example, half way through the book, the author decides to blame Native Americans for the problems (never mentioned them once before this) and it becomes a vital part of the plot! It's just naff.