Rating: 
Summary: A good Book overall
Review: This the best WC book since End Run(which was the best of theseries in my opinion). It is fast paced and easy to get into, yeah there are a few inconsistancies, such as the phase shielding, but it made for a more beleivable begining of the war. One of the problems with the games were that they were very obscure, about the beginings of the war, specifically with Goefery Tolwyn, and Richard Vance. You can see a lot about what was driving Tolwyn 40 years later in the Price of Freedom.
Rating: 
Summary: Enough problems to annoy any reader.
Review: Whether you are a Wing Commander fan, or just a casual sci-fi reader, this novel is painful to read. Starting with WC fans, yes, this book has Yet Another Brand New Fighter Force. Thought some of those WC I planes were supposed to be around pre-war? Nope, instead there's Wildcats, Hurricanes, Falcons, and a whole slew of others. Thought phase shielding was a brand new technology in WC II? Nope, not only did it exist pre-war, it's the main plot technology. For you casual readers, there's the wonderfully one-dimensional characters. Not all of the characters, mind you, but enough of them. Seems every fleet officer knows that the Kilrathi are going to attack, have even guessed where, when, and how. Every politician is supremely evil, in that way only politicians can. Except for a few cases, the Kilrathi are big, stupid, honour-bound warriors, living for the fight and ignoring everything else. But the biggest problem with this novel is readily apparent to anyone who knows anything about Pearl Harbour, Midway, and the pacific war in WWII. You see, if you know what happened in those battles, you know the plot of the entire book. Now, modeling historic events is a good literary tool, it helps lend some credibility to a plot, helps with the suspension of disbelief since you know something similar has happened in the past. But here, it's taken WAY too far. Damn near everything in the book is lifted directly from history. The Kilrathi are portrayed as the unknown, warlike society, while the Confederation is the "sleeping giant," to quote a Kilrathi! Carriers and their fighters are seen as second fiddle to battleships, until the main battle proves all those battleship officers wrong. The Kilrathi war plan is a sneak attack on the Confed's largest base outside Terra using a war plan that the Confed wargamed a few years earlier, just like Pearl Harbour. Even the small details are here, from Midway's faked equipment breakdown, to the "Tora, Tora, Tora!" victory call. Of course, this is all explained away in the foreword, where the "authour" describes the novel as a "companion piece" to a historical study of the Kilrathi war. Bottom line, this book is not sci-fi, it's history with a different setting, and it just doesn't work. When will authours learn that if they don't like established parts of a fictional universe, it is possible to work around them? They do not have to re-write the universe, just to make their story "better." Some people actually like continuity.
Rating: 
Summary: Action Stations = A Great WC Story
Review: Wing Commander: Action Stations is one of the best WC books yet. Forstchen characters are more developed then in his previous books. The story is very interesting, and involves some different aspects of Wing Commander. I strongly reccomend this book to any WC fan.
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