I enjoyed the story and David's parallel story lines were easy to follow. However, it was clear that he has little &#34;real&#34; experience in shipboard life or with military structure and command personalities. All of his characters are exagerated stereotypes and the interpersonal exchanges would have resulted in few of these protagonists ever reaching command because of the obvious psycholoogical abberations present.One sure indicator of his unfamiliarity with naval (spaceship or surfaceship) life is his lubberly use of &#34;the&#34; before ship names. We who have spent many years and many deck watches know that a manned ship is truly a living entity, christened at its birth (launching), and possessing the nature and personality of its officers and crew. Use of &#34;the&#34; before its given name is akin to referring to this book's author as &#34;the David Derrico.&#34;Also, as Isaac Azimov pointed out repeatedly, good science fiction must be good science. I was appalled when the good Admiral referred to &#34;a new element&#34; as part of the alien hull. Any &#34;new element&#34; in this universe would necessarily be very unstable with a half life measured in nano-seconds so can't be fairly used withhout first laying the appropriate background work. Without that, this becomes only fantasy and not credible science fiction.
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