Acheron Rising (Ken Lozito)

Acheron Rising: A Federation Chronicles Novella
The Federation Chronicles series
Ken Lozito
Acoustical Books LLC
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: For a century, the galaxy's worlds have knelt before the Jordani Federation, a cruel and militant nation none have been able to challenge and survive... until now. When the Jordani intercept a supply run for a secret research colony world of the Acheron Confederacy, a place where they can research new technology and weapons to someday throw off Jordani's heavy yoke, the planet's only defenses are acting Acheron Federation Navy Captain Elias Browning, three outmatched warships - and one man whose technological breakthrough will forever alter the galactic balance of power.

REVIEW: It was free, it was short, and it looked intriguing (or at least entertaining), so I gave this one a try. Acheron Rising is pretty much what it says it is, a military science fiction story with an underdog captain, a cruel admiral, and a world that needs defending, with a new gamechanger technology in virtual intelligence and uploaded consciousness. It doesn't lag much, if at all. On the downside, though, this is an exceptionally male-heavy story; there were a total of two women that I counted, one a helpless mother and the other a cold-as-ice corporate shark out to poach the new tech for private exploitation. The characters are more or less who you'd expect in this sort of story, as well: the impulsive young man unexpectedly thrust into the captain's seat, the evil admiral who has a mustache but doesn't quite twirl it, the college technology prodigy forced by a family crisis and scheming corporations to prematurely launch his grand experiment (and, in doing so, maybe save his family and a sickly brother), and so forth. That's not necessarily bad, and it serves the story well enough, but it isn't stunningly original either.
What really mystified me, though, is why the author felt this prequel story needed to be written. Not that it isn't a competent tale, if somewhat abrupt, but the excerpt from the first novel, Acheron Inheritance, would've interested me without all this testosterone-heavy preamble: it starts with a man who barely remembers his own name waking up in the body of an agricultural robot on a devastated world, with a virtual-intelligence assistant informing him that he's being hunted by battle mech drones. That right there is what they call a "hook", and one where it was easy enough to deduce the existence of mind-upload technology without explaining where the tech came from or how it was first deployed. In any event, while it's not bad, it ends up feeling a bit superfluous. (I am seriously considering that novel though; that hook really intrigued me...)

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