The Caloris Rim Project, by Glenn P. Mac Donald, is a hit and miss military/space adventure containing all the requisite elements: the hero(s), the love interest, the corporate/government conspiracy, rogue military operatives, and interstellar war. Mac Donald gets a lot of things right, but just as often swings and misses. He delivers some great action scenes and inventive alien species, but his characters often seem cut from a broad and stereotypical cloth. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book -- I did -- but I enjoyed parts of it a lot more than I enjoyed others. I was left feeling as though I'd just read a lot more words than the story needed to be told.
I had some problems keeping track with what was going on and why. About two-thirds of the way through, I sort of gave up on trying to figure out how the overall plot fit together and just followed along for the rest of the rise. It's as though there are two different books here. The story Mac Donald ended up finishing didn't feel like the same story he started. I think a good editor might have loped off the first third of the book and tightened up the rest, and it would have been better for it.
The Caloris Rim Project, by Glenn P. Mac Donald Book Review
