Interesting.
Amazon is selling this ebook for $3.03. Yet it looks like it is available for free along with his other books
–http://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?t=698566--
I've edited this to reflect comments by MTHead and baronmog and to prevent anyone from being misled.
That link I posted may not be as .... trustworthy as you or I would like. Thanks to MTHead for pointing out what I missed
Thanks to baronmog for providing a link to Chris Nutall's site, where the books are free, with the option to thank Mr Nutall for his work in a financial manner :-DI’ll have to check it out, but I am a bit disappointed since when I saw Ark and sci-fi my first thought was this:
There’s something very weird about the download links at that site - both of the links for “Ark Royal” actually link to “you are going to hear me roar.zip”, which might be somebody’s clever idea of an alternate title but sounds (to me) a lot like somebody baiting an illegal-download trap, in the best Prenda Law style.
The links for “The Nelson Touch” do seem to point to a file with an appropriate name, but “A Learning Experience” goes to something called “imthirsty”, which again makes me suspicious.
Even assuming that all of the links are appropriate, just with funny names, I don’t see any indication that Mr. Nuttall had any say in posting these files to this site. Did I miss that?
This looks like a cross between Logan’s Run and Speed Racer.
Christ, I really just dated myself…
Interesting. I was about to express disappointment that the books seemed to only be available via Amazon Kindle (which I will use when our Sun suddenly gains 50x its own mass and then collapses into a black hole).
If you enjoy the books and wish to show some monetary appreciation, http://www.chrishanger.net/cookiejar.html
Thanks for the heads up. I was actually doing a couple of other things and hadn’t checked those links very well. I have access to an anonymous system, so I may take the risk and check them out, just to be sure.
Thanks! Given MTHead’s comment, I’ll go through that site instead.
And editing my previous comment to reflect that.
It’s an interesting book, but is also quite obviously the author’s first, and is in severe need of a professional tidy-up.
Paragraph layout is unique, to say the least, and there’s a lot of repetition.
On top of this, whilst it’s ostensibly a novel concentrating very much on the military, the author shows clear gaps in his understanding of command structures.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s a great first attempt, and an enjoyable Galacticalike, but it comes off as rather amateurish overall.
It is a good read, interesting and exciting but I agree with Mungrul in that it could have done with a once over from an editor.
However it is self published and he turns out novels at quite a pace and I have since gone on to read a fair amount of them. Hi fantasy ones are ok too, all of them seem to have an interesting core conceit, but in an ideal world would go through another draft or two.
His books are the equivalent of a 22 episode tv show, a steady feed of varying entertainment with a regular show of promise that makes you overlook the weaker elements. If that makes sense?
Is it just me, or does the Amazon book description sound almost exactly like the 1st episode of Battlestar Galactica (2004)?
I read this book and the sequel (The Nelson Touch, IIRC?) and … well, the author is a rampant misoginist. There’s no female character that’s even remotely likable, they are all sex toys and shrews. Also the writing is clunky, the strategy is superficial (if you are into the navy-in-space thing) and it’s just no fun at all.
I agree that his books could use a little polishing up, but I’ve been enjoying the space navy genre and his characters and the story lines. I’ve read Ark Royal and the Nelson Touch. I’m reading the Trafalgar Gambit now. Thanks for the nudge to check out his fantasy novels.
Yeah, this book is bad. I love me some vapid space opera, but Ark Royal is just bad. It’s filled with that kind of unexamined 60’s sexism of someone who has no idea that they’re sexist, it’s also constantly taking every opportunity to sneer at and belittle anyone not in the military, it’s also filled with repetitive rants about reporters all being sub-human filth, intolerable morons etc, it lacks insight about those relationships, and all the bile and weird rants aren’t the musings of one flawed character; ALL the stoic heroic characters all think this way, all the time, as if that’s normal and heroic and Axiomatic Truth. I regret that I paid even the $3 to buy this after seeing it recommended here, but it did have me curious about where all the bile is coming from. I initially wondered if it was written in the hot-headed days just after the death of Lady Di (blamed on pursuit by paparazzi), but then there were some military references that indicated it was recent (Amazon indicates 2014). So I don’t get where all the chips on the shoulder are coming from, and I’m no-longer inclined to care. Skip this crap. There is better out there.
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