{"id":3293,"date":"2012-04-02T05:00:05","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T09:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allandouglas.com\/blog\/?p=3293"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:41","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:41","slug":"book-review-sullivans-war-all-good-men-serve-the-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/book-review-sullivans-war-all-good-men-serve-the-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Sullivan’s War, All Good Men Serve the Devil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sullivan’s War 1: The Story<\/h1>\n
\"book
Cover art,<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rick Sullivan is an idealist, bent on ending a corrupt government\u2019s strangle hold on his home planet of Edaline.\u00a0 Sullivan is the bad-guy and not above killing people to accomplish his goal.<\/p>\n

Frank Allen is an investigator in the equivalent of a galaxy-spanning FBI.\u00a0 Someone killed a planetary assemblyman, Frank is part of the team sent to investigate.\u00a0 This quickly pits him against Sullivan in a planet hopping game of hide and seek that comes to involve an assembly of colorful and often loathsome characters.\u00a0 There is little regard for The Law among the fringe planets and Allen and his team meet with opposition even from among their own side. <\/p>\n

The Mechanics<\/h1>\n

This is a brief book at around 33,000 words, but it tells a good story that steps right along because it\u2019s not bogged down with blocks of filler and fluff.<\/p>\n

I found the characterization to be fair.\u00a0 I never developed a real bond with either of the main characters, but did understand their motivations clearly.\u00a0 Dialogue was good.\u00a0 It was very natural, with some humor but not trite.\u00a0 I like what Rose leaves out of the characterization.\u00a0 In one case we have a tense situation but rather than stating the scene he uses clues like:<\/p>\n

\u201cWill do.\u201d Brain took another drag of his cigarette.\u00a0 His cheek twitched slightly as he exhaled.<\/em><\/p>\n

A good example of the show-me-don\u2019t-tell-me school of writing.\u00a0 He does a lot of this and it is quite effective.<\/p>\n

The manuscript could have used one last edit before clicking \u2018Publish\u2019 as there were several places where a word was missing or the wrong word was used \u2013 obviously from changing a tense or viewpoint.\u00a0 There were only three or four of these, but this sort of thing annoys me when it\u2019s encountered in an otherwise great story.<\/p>\n

Stand-out Stuff<\/h1>\n

What I liked best about Rose\u2019s writing style was the fact that he could take a scene that others would have made blood-spatteringly gory or overly sexual and presented it in a way that did not offend my delicate sensibilities.\u00a0 He retained the emotion of a scene without forcing disgustingly visual detail upon me.\u00a0 There is a fair bit of murder and mayhem, and a little sex, in this book but it is all presented in a way that it is clear and understandable without being over-blown for the sake of sensationalism.\u00a0 It is a part of the story, not the focus.\u00a0 I like that a lot.<\/p>\n

The relationship that develops between our two main characters is interesting too \u2013 but I\u2019ll not spoil that for you.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/h1>\n

Sullivan\u2019s War: All Good Men Serve the Devil <\/em><\/strong>By Michael K Rose is a tight action story that takes you on a romp around the galaxy to mostly uncivilized worlds populated by bad people.\u00a0 Lawman Allen is smart and resourceful in his pursuit of the terrorist, Sullivan. It is a well written story with a good plot and fair characters.\u00a0 I enjoyed the book and will be looking into the second book, a prologue Sergent Riley\u2019s Account.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sullivan’s War 1: The Story Rick Sullivan is an idealist, bent on ending a corrupt government’s strangle hold on his home planet of Edaline.  Sullivan is the bad-guy and not above killing people to accomplish his goal. Frank Allen is an investigator in the equivalent of a galaxy-spanning FBI.  Someone killed a planetary assemblyman, Frank … Continue reading “Book Review: Sullivan’s War, All Good Men Serve the Devil”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3,14,13],"class_list":["post-3293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-share-the-love","tag-books","tag-review","tag-scifi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3293"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21601,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3293\/revisions\/21601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}