Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars
Never trust Amazon book reviews. Or maybe online user reviews on any generic website. I finished my previous book and needed something to read at short notice so I decided to take advantage of Amazon Prime’s Lending Library and the reviews for this book were pretty high with the caveat that it followed very closely to “Battlestar Galactica” the TV show. I can deal with that. Nope. To say that “Constitution” follows “Battlestar Galactica” is like saying that “Romeo Must Die” follows “Romeo and Juliet”. Sure, there are similarities to the story, but how the heck do you eff up the source material so bad?
The truth is that “Constitution” is just your standard pulp military sci-fi book and nothing more. If it can be said that someone has plagiarized a genre, Nick Webb has done so with this book. There is not a single original idea and every character and plot point is a cliche. This doesn’t necessarily make for bad reading, but it definitely doesn’t make for good reading. If you decide to read this book, “Constitution” will forever be in the “books you have read” category, but not much more.
As the story went on and I knew there wasn’t going to be much enjoyment to be had, I changed my reading style from “enjoyment” mode to “guess the author’s political bent” mode. I came to the conclusion that Nick Webb is either a libertarian or decided to make his main character attractive to libertarian fanboys by having him casting dispersions against the incompetent government that happened to create the very ship he is in charge of and which will certainly save the human race but only if the captain can do what he wants when he wants with the tools that are given to him by that government. Libertarianism in a nutshell. I assume the former,though there is little Nick Webb information out there. I still give some credence to the latter as being possible as military sci-fi seems to be inundated with libertarian readers and they would certainly explain all the good reviews given to this simplistic book.
The best things I can say about “Constitution” is it’s not bad and it’s a very quick read at 362 pages, half of which are taken up by chapter titles. I kid you not. There are 71 chapters in this book.