Major

Rating:
Summary: Utter Rubbish
Review: Ok. Lets be serious, now. I am a 15 year old male, but don't immediatley establish a steryotype. Sure, my spelling may not be stellar, but I'd like to think myself an accomplished reader, and I've particularly enjoyed the field of Military Sci-Fi. Ian Douglas has acheived my respect and admiration for his accurate potrayal of Warfare in space (hey, it sounded good!) Rick Shelly is a clown in the prestigious offices of literature. Hell, I'm suprised they let him in the lobby. He knows combat, and can write combat, but little more. The charactars (expecially the main one) are cardboard, static, and phony. Their moves are predictable, their thinking one-track. Surely you have better things to do than read trash books like these.

Rating:
Summary: Major continues a mediocre trend
Review: Pity there is no option for half sstars, because Major is a marginal improvement over Captain. Another review of Major compares Shelley unfavorably to Moon and Weber; to me there is no comparison. Shelley's characters appear unmotivated, his plotting contrived and his writing is amazingly stilted. The technology seems awkward and bizarrely old-fashioned, compared even to the military today. The career success of Nolan, the protaganist,is inexplicable, as he never seems to do anything very impressively and always seems to react to opponents rather than drive his own opportunities. Let's face it; the idea of a mercenary planet like Dirigent is pretty absurd. But Shelley does nothing to make you suspend disbelief. And nothing to generate a lot of interest, either.

Rating:
Summary: Utter Rubbish
Review: Rick Shelley's book "Major," (ISBN 0-441-00680-9) is the fourth in his series chronicling Lon Nolan's life as a soldier in the Dirigent Mercenary Corps (DMC) is well worth reading. Lon Nolan's adopted home world of Dirigent's major source of revenue is selling the services of professional soldiers and the exporting of military equipment and munitions. Lon has advanced relatively quickly to the rank of Captain in the DMC and is commanding officer of Company A, 2nd Battalion in the 7th Regiment, which is at the top of the contract list for deploying to another world. Prior to the three month contract to train the police militia on the world of Bancroft, Captain Lon Nolan is called to sit as a member of a General Court-martial the results of the weigh heavily on him even after the case is over. The training contract goes well until Lon learns that Bancroft's mining settlements, which are the world's major source of revenue, are being attacked by one or more parties of raiders, who steal the products produced by the mines. Captain Nolan, after negotiating a rider to the contract, leads three of his platoons in to Bancroft's wilderness on a mission to attack, capture, and, if possible, eliminate the raiders based on very little information. The Dirigent Mercenary company looses the first encounter with a group of raiders, but only makes Captain Nolan that much more determined to bring them to bay. You must read the book to find out what happens to Captain Lon Nolan and his troops.

Rating:
Summary: Biography of a Professional Soldier of the future.
Review: Rick Shelley's book "Major," (ISBN 0-441-00680-9) is the fourth in his series chronicling Lon Nolan's life as a soldier in the Dirigent Mercenary Corps (DMC) is well worth reading. Lon Nolan's adopted home world of Dirigent's major source of revenue is selling the services of professional soldiers and the exporting of military equipment and munitions. Lon has advanced relatively quickly to the rank of Captain in the DMC and is commanding officer of Company A, 2nd Battalion in the 7th Regiment, which is at the top of the contract list for deploying to another world. Prior to the three month contract to train the police militia on the world of Bancroft, Captain Lon Nolan is called to sit as a member of a General Court-martial the results of the weigh heavily on him even after the case is over. The training contract goes well until Lon learns that Bancroft's mining settlements, which are the world's major source of revenue, are being attacked by one or more parties of raiders, who steal the products produced by the mines. Captain Nolan, after negotiating a rider to the contract, leads three of his platoons in to Bancroft's wilderness on a mission to attack, capture, and, if possible, eliminate the raiders based on very little information. The Dirigent Mercenary company looses the first encounter with a group of raiders, but only makes Captain Nolan that much more determined to bring them to bay. You must read the book to find out what happens to Captain Lon Nolan and his troops.

Rating:
Summary: Just readable
Review: This book finally reads more like a sci-fi novel than a reading of a manual of the DMC. Lon Nolan has the potential of becoming a stellar action hero, if Mr. Shelly has the ability to make him so. The action scenes need more vivid and exiting or spellbindig segments, while the character developement is almost captivating it falls just short. Compared with the first three books in the series this is the better of the three, but still not up to writers such as E.Moon, and D.Weber.I will give Mr. Shelly one more try and then decide on further purchases.