Rating: 
Summary: First time this author has missed the mark!
Review: I'm late to this party, all the good points are taken. So, I didn't like this book very much. I did however finish it, thats something! This author has done some fine work, and I will still wait for his next work with interest. Some of his background for fleshing out this future was amusing but on the whole it seemed rushed to me.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad for a first novel -- too bad it's his ninth!
Review: Nominated for this year's Prometheus Award (it lost to Smith's somewhat better Forge of the Elders), this book helps demonstrate the problems with literary prizes that reward political views, rather than literary work.
I'm a little bemused that White has been writing for nearly ten years, as this reads like a first novel. Most of the thematically important material is related through background narration or several painfully direct dialogue scenes. Every time the theme and the plot threaten to interfere with each other in interesting ways, a monkey-wrench gets thrown into the works, spinning them far away from each other for another fifty pages (except, as stated, when the plot stops altogether so that one character can tell another character the theme of the book at length). And none of the characters attain much in the way of depth. Though the plot machinations show some ingenuity, the characters acting them out are seldom more than cartoons.
Which is a shame, because there is more than adequate material for a good book here. Fighting against aliens who aren't exactly good, but are far less evil than the humans facing them poses many interesting questions -- none of which are dealt with. In fact, the game of Musical Antagonists ends with a big space battle against one faction of the aliens, utterly undercutting the most interesting parts of the book.
If Mr. White had taken more time with this, if he had made his enviromentalists and statists actually sound like they believed what they were saying, and if he hadn't sloughed off most of the work of antagonism onto the evil faction of the aliens, this could have been a much better book.
As is, it remains a mildly amusing waste of a few hours, if you don't disagree with his politics too vehemently.
Rating:
Summary: Missed opportunities.
Review: There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of sci-fi action novels that are good for an evening's entertainment. They read fast, the plot is shallow, and the characters wooden. You aren't disappointed because you didn't expect much. This pretty much describes Eagle Against the Stars. Yet, I was disappointed. White had a chance to take a major theme, the meeting of two cultures, one more advanced and do something interesting. Sort of a Science Fiction version of what happened to Japan when it met the west in the 19th century. I could see a fat book chuck full of details that could keep me busy for weeks. Unfortunately he took the easy way out and wrote a libertarian space opera complete with shallow characters, snide anti Liberal asides and predictable plot. As space opera, its worth reading. Yet, it coulda been a contender. J. A. Schroeder Seattle, WA
Rating:
Summary: Missed opportunities.
Review: There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of sci-fi action novels that are good for an evening's entertainment. They read fast, the plot is shallow, and the characters wooden. You aren't disappointed because you didn't expect much. This pretty much describes Eagle Against the Stars. Yet, I was disappointed. White had a chance to take a major theme, the meeting of two cultures, one more advanced and do something interesting. Sort of a Science Fiction version of what happened to Japan when it met the west in the 19th century. I could see a fat book chuck full of details that could keep me busy for weeks. Unfortunately he took the easy way out and wrote a libertarian space opera complete with shallow characters, snide anti Liberal asides and predictable plot. As space opera, its worth reading. Yet, it coulda been a contender. J. A. Schroeder Seattle, WA
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book is proof positive that Steve White is a full-fledged partner of the StarFire series, despite some snide commentary from the politically charged "readers"; and a great author in his own right.
Great story, well developed characters, indeed a very plausible scenario for the near-future USA (aliens or no aliens). Too bad White developed the whole story in the frame of a single book; this could've been made into a trilogy much like "The Disinherited".
Rating:
Summary: eagle against the stars
Review: turttledove! where are you when we need you? this book shows why a little information, in the hands of someone with no historical context, is considered dangerous. if you can keep from laughing at his vision of the future, the book is his standard shoot-em-up of heroes escaping impossible odds again, again, again, and on and on. if your looking for something original, look somewhere else. otherwise it's the kind of science fiction only the texas militia could love.
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