Fortress Frontier by Myke Cole
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The big thing about over-the-top action flicks (or books like this) is that we've got heavily stereotyped hero characters from all walks of life doing heavily stereotyped things in big flashy over-the-top action scenes.

It's kinda the defining characteristic. We sometimes love to have a big steaming plate of our favorite foods over and over and over because it tastes good and it's comforting... and this is no different.

Bookbinder is a paper-pushing Officer who awakens with frighteningly powerful magics and gets sent to the front lines in the Other World. He's smart, he's flexible, and he's not willing to let obvious problems slide... like having all the supplies to the Forward Base cut off.

Of course, the only one who can reestablish connections is a certain AWOL soldier from the first book.

See how this works? Simple tale. Lots of flashy magics and Army Hoo-Rah, can-do attitudes, pathos, and competence versus corruption. And did I say that it's flashy? It is. Popcorn fiction.

Magic and the Army. Fast-paced, nothing really new, but still written in that shiny way that is pure edge-of-your-seat entertainment.

I liked this one a lot more than the first. :) It has a brand new problem with stereotypes, too, eschewing the whole Indian thing for a Hindu thing. *sigh* But it's hard to take any of it seriously, here, because these cardboard characters are even bigger and shinier than the ones in the first book. It's like... Wow. Look at that. Good thing they're all Nagas, right? *shakes head*

Still, don't let me get you down. It was still a great mindless action flick. :)

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