A human-centric space opera, John Van Stry‘s first two Wolfhounds novels are remarkably proficient at depicting shades of indefensible behavior. There aren’t really any unequivocal ‘good guys’ here, yet the protagonists still manage to be the people you want to win in the end. My only complaint so far is that the romantic development in the first book is quite abrupt.
Suffering a bit from a shaky start, Shattered Dreams is the first of Shawn Wilson‘s Ultimate Level 1 novels. The (minor) issue here is that the protagonist starts out terrible yet does a complete 180 after leaving town. So… why not just have him start out with that decent personality? It wouldn’t have changed anything about the awakening event itself, would’ve made reading through said event far less painful, and avoided any whiplash inducing characterization issues afterward.
Anyway, opening chapter aside the book is a perfectly engaging action-focused zero-to-hero type of story. Particularly notable things at this point would I suppose be the dark undercurrent relating to the protagonist’s skill and the absence of any serious romance elements.