{"id":2496,"date":"2011-09-05T14:39:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-05T18:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=2496"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"book-review-in-her-name-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/book-review-in-her-name-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: In Her Name – Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"In<\/a>This is a review of the eBook version of \u201cIn Her Name: Empire\u201d; the first book of the In Her Name<\/em><\/strong> series written by Michael R. Hicks.<\/p>\n

On a five-star scale, I\u2019m giving this one four stars.\u00a0 It probably deserves five stars, but I\u2019m snatching one back simply because there were parts of it that made me, personally, uncomfortable.\u00a0 If this were a literary review I would not do that, but this is me telling you how *I* felt about this book.<\/p>\n

***No Spoilers***<\/p>\n

This is an exciting, well-crafted read. It embraces a number of genres as the story goes along, but I\u2019d classify it primarily as Sci-Fi.\u00a0 The initial chapters are definitely Sci-fi as remnants of a defeated human population try desperately to fend off an alien invasion of their planet.\u00a0 Our protagonist is a boy caught in the devastation.\u00a0 The second scene is an orphanage planet established for youths like our protagonist who lost their families in the war.\u00a0 It is a harsh environment, an alien place run by petty bureaucrats who think nothing of exploiting the children in their care.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The next section steps out of standard Sci-Fi and into Fantasy as our protagonist is taken to live on a different planet, one where a warrior race trains to be warriors, and where everyone lives a medieval lifestyle even though they are a space faring race.\u00a0 There is even a scene where the heroes must outwit a dragon.\u00a0 I am not a big fan of fantasy and my enthusiasm cooled some as I got into this section, but the story is so well told and the characterization so strong that I kept on.<\/p>\n

There is an element of the erotic\/romance genre mixed in here that generated the uncomfortable feelings in my rather prudish conscience, but \u2013 again \u2013 though the scene was decidedly sexual, it was handled with enough tact I never reached the decision to lay the book aside.\u00a0 By today’s \u201cromance\u201d standards it’s probably pretty tame (I would not know for sure I don\u2019t read that stuff) but it was racier than I normally encounter in my reading.<\/p>\n

I found nothing that impeded the flow of the story, no spelling or grammatical errors (I\u2019m picky about these) no distracting word choices, no stilted language.\u00a0 It was a smooth, pleasant read and an exciting tale.\u00a0 There was one point in the story where the voice being used changed some, it became more literary or flowery and that did cause me to wonder what had happened, but it was not so discernible as to impede the story.<\/p>\n

The story ended with a satisfactory conclusion that also leads the reader to want to buy the next book in the series, \u201cConfederation\u201d \u2013 which I have done and I look forward to getting started on it.\u00a0 If you\u2019re looking for a well-crafted story that will hold your interest as it steps neatly over standard genre boundaries and melds them into a single cohesive body of work, In Her Name: Empire is an excellent choice.<\/p>\n

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