Not Quite A Review of Incursion by Aleksandr Voinov

Aleksandr Voinov

Incursion

Riptide Publishing, July 9, 2012 | 85 pages

Author’s website | Goodreads | Buy book here

Backblurb:
When the local authorities ask Kyle Juenger to hunt a shape-shifting Glyrinny spy, he can't refuse. After all, he can use the reward to replace his paralyzed legs with cyberware, and maybe even to return to his home planet. Besides, he hates the morphs-those invasive, brain-eating monstrosities whose weapons cost him his legs.
Kyle's best lead is the Scorpion, a mercenary ship armed to the teeth. Grimm, the "Scorpion's" pilot and captain, fascinates Kyle. He's everything Kyle lost with his legs, and he's from the same home world. He's also of the warrior caste-half priest, half savior. But Grimm's been twisted by life as a merc, and Kyle's stuck undercover as a criminal on the run.

That doesn't stop Grimm from coming on to Kyle, or from insisting he's more than the sum of his past and his useless legs. But Kyle has other concerns-like tracking a dangerous morph who could be wearing anyone's face. And as if things weren't complicated enough, Kyle can't tell if Grimm is part of the solution . . . or part of the problem.

Genre & Keywords: M/M Romance, Sci-Fi, Aliens, Space Travel

Reviewed by Lis:

Okay. So. There we have it. The review for Incursion (if you can call it as much). After mucho cursing, hair pulling and even breaking my own rule: looking at other reviews, because I did not quite know what to do with this book, I sat down to write this. I think I’ve stopped reading this book and started up again at least 5 times upon receiving it.  

Incursion falls in the category of George Martin, Marion Zimmer Bradley and Tolstoy. The books are pretty to look at, but just not for me and not because of the content but for inexplicable reason the book just doesn’t work for me. I felt no connection to the story or characters.

Objectively I can see that Incursion is a good story. It’s got a good plot: lots of action, interesting worlds, and enemies to friends/lovers theme. It’s also got likable less than perfect characters. All that with good writing and world-building. Maybe the ending wasn’t all that, but then again, it also wasn’t a convenient one either.

So why didn’t Incursion work for me? Short answer? I don’t really know. It just wasn’t a book for me. Maybe if I try it again in a year it will be different. For this reason I’m going to leave the book unrated.
This doesn’t mean the book is bad. As I said, I peeked at other reviews and many of them give Incursion a 4 to 5 star rating. So that sure counts for something and means this review gets the: “It’s me, not you” spiel. ~