John Love's "Faith" is a Solid, Worthwhile Space Opera

I've been reading so much fantasy as of late that I was starting to wonder if I lost my taste for good sci-fi. The last few I tried to pick up didn't sit well with me at all, and I had high hopes for this one based on some reviews I had read.

he book is not 100% perfect - it starts out slow, and, frankly, kind of ridiculous. There's good concepts about this mysterious ship that essentially made a civilization regress centuries with how soundly it defeated them, and the ship, known as Faith to those in the system, is back. We have some strange races around, and we have a class of ship that operate outside of the realm of the system government, all of which are named after serial killers. This story revolves mostly around the crew of the Charles Manson, who believe they have the capability to defeat and destroy Faith.

What follows, after nearly 100 pages of sometimes tiring setup comes a simply awesome, very exciting battle between two massive spaceships nearly the rest of the way through. It's tactical, it's psychological, nothing at all happens the way you'd expect, it becomes very philosophical, and it rarely lets up on the gas the entire time. I kept waiting to see the climax of the battle to come and to come, and the book just rewarded me with more action instead.

It's not a traditional sci-fi space opera, even though it hits all those chords perfectly. It was a great read because it scratched my specific sci-fi itch, but it was also a great read because it was so unexpected and unpredictable. I can't say for sure that it broke a lot of new ground, but it felt fresh and different, and that meant something for me.

This book definitely lived up to the hype for me. Glad I grabbed it when I did, and I'm glad I stuck with it. If this is your style, I definitely recommend it.