Tony Saunders puts up a story which has been told and retold many times, the earliest I remember would be a Tom Swift, Jr. book which uses a similar propulsion drive principle in the 1960s. However, the author doesn’t demonstrate a working understanding of the physical sciences, engineering, business, or government in this book. Those can be set aside if the author is telling a compelling story, which in this case he does not. There’s a story here, it just isn’t presented in its best form. The biggest issues are pace and characterization. The dialogue is mostly unattributed and spare of descriptive detail. All speech sounds like the same person is talking monotone, without emotional context. What do the characters look like, do they smile, how do they move, what are they thinking, etc. Why are there variable jumps in time from one paragraph to the next? What were the aliens doing for the years it took to launch Earth’s spaceship? Did the editor only provide a spelling and grammar check?
My recommendation is that potential buyers read the sample text on Amazon before buying a copy. The sample is very representative of the overall quality in this case.
As it stands, I think this is most suitable for a young teen SciFi audience, I rate this book a 3.0, based on the FCP book review standard. Priced at $2.99 on Amazon Kindle, it’s a fair entertainment value.
(Disclosure: I learned of the book through Veracious Readers Only! and purchased a copy)