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Battle Cry | Rating | |
| B | |||
| Jack McKinney | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Robotech: First Generation | Genesis, Battle Cry, Homecoming, Battlehymn, Force of Arms, Doomsday, Southern Cross, Metal Fire, The Final Nightmare, Invid Invasion, Metamorphosis, Symphony of Light, The Devil's Hand, Dark Powers, Death Dance, World Killers, Rubicon, The End of the Circle | ||
The SDF-1 has folded away from Earth. But a miscalculation put them out by Pluto instead of the Moon. Worse, that same miscalculation caused the island of Macross, and its fifty thousand residents, to be transported along with the ship. Worst yet, somehow the fold engines disappeared into thin air! The only way back home is the long way, through the entire solar system. And the Zentraedi aren't exactly ready to just let that happen.
The most eggregious problems of the first book are largely absent here. Which isn't to say animé physics aren't present; the author simply doesn't make as big a deal over them this time. And since most of it takes place during dogfights that are only vaguely described anyway, who's to say that what this pilot or that one does is flat out impossible?
There are some other problems, though. The most notable one is the pacing. Everything happens at a breakneck pace. Battles are nearly constant, leaving no breathing room for character depth or drama. It's just fight after fight after fight. I like quickly-paced books, but this is rediculous.
The quick pacing shows up elsewhere, also. At the end of book one the ship is near Pluto's orbit; two months later they are at Saturn. And Rick Hunter is certified to fly combat missions over those months; he was already a pilot, but I think two months is pretty fast to learn how to fly a super-fighter even under crash course learning. And only a few months after that he is promoted... to Lieutenant! His previous rank was never mentioned, somehow, yet I still think this is probably a pretty large jump in rank.
In some ways this book is better than the first; the lack of outright impossible actions is a big plus. But in others it is worse, like the lack of depth. This is good but still not great. Fans of the series or of animé should still have a ball reading it, though.
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