The Recruitment Rise of the Free Fleet

I liked the characters and story line, it is a great start to a space opera saga type series, the only thing that let it down was the editing, but only in a small way. I cannot wait for the follow up.

Author really, really needs to clean this up. I have the very real suspicion that this was written with a speech to text program, and never once gone over to fix issues.

I'll admit, I only read about 20 pages or so. But when things like "8eight" keep showing up, I'm already out of the experience.

I just completed the sixth book before I decided to write this review. The story was enjoyable and has a nice wrap up. I would have given it a solid 4 stars if the editing had been better. At times it was difficult to understand what was going on because of the lack of a good editor.

This is the first Kindle book that I've read that I could not even get past 1% of the story. Not only did I find the writing poor, I couldn't get past the incredibly bad sentence structure. Since I could not get past 1%, I have no idea how much worse it gets. I can only presume it's consistent.

Here are some examples. The first sentence in the first chapter: "I woke to my face, making an impression in the floor." The use of a comma is not needed here and kind of makes the reader stop and pause and read "I woke to my face." The second sentence in the second paragraph of the first chapter: "I thought to myself as I used my left to pick myself up." In my head I'm hearing Scooby Doo going "Aroo?" My left *what*? My left ear? A reference to the movie MY LEFT FOOT? When the author is references age ranges of people he does not hyphenate anything so it makes it difficult to really gauge what he means. And then when a character is thinking or speaking, he does not use the standard sentence structure we all learned in elementary school (at least I did). At worst, it should have been learned by your sophomore year in high school. Examples: **One boy not even ten years old tugged on my arm "what do we do?"** OR **"How should I know? I've never done this before." I said to the floor.**

He doesn't identify who is speaking making you have to guess if this is someone he's already identified or not. No one should have to work this hard to read a book. There may be a good story in here, but I don't know that anyone will be able to discover it until it is properly proofed and edited. I returned this book for a refund.

The story line and ideas were good, some of the characters could have used some more development. I liked the book and think with a good professional edit this book would get a higher rating. I will purchase the second book when it comes out.

PS. Check the page length of the book, you get twice as much book than normal.

This book is cheap, and it's not hard to see why. The phrase "ballistic approach to spelling and punctuation" springs to mind. Would have paid more if it meant the author went through it a second time with spell check. Setting aside the editorial issues (which are legion), it's not actually too bad, it has some interesting ideas certainly.

Seriously though, someone get this dude an editor.

Very entertaining story, and I was kept interested the whole way through. However, there were LOTS of grammatical and continuity errors, with very little explanation reasoning or explanations of contradictory statements and events. Many details are also glossed over or entirely left out. For example...

SPOILERS!!!!

-There are many different sizes, statures, and capabilities of aliens, but they completely interchangeably use all the equipment.
-I have no recollection of what the aliens of a particular planet look like...it was likely explained at one point early on, but never referenced again later, and these same aliens who encounter many different species, view the main character as a "beast" because he looks so different from normal humans and more similar to other aliens that are in the marines.
-The marriage ceremony is explained away so that the syndicate does not have to separate 'breeders' from 'soldiers,' but months after forcing them to marry they do nothing to make the soldiers have kids, and there is no mention of having any pregnant soldiers, nor are any provisions given for those who may be pregnant. This whole plot sequence just seems like an excuse to get the main characters to marry without actually liking each other.

END SPOILERS!!!!

All in all, the discontinuities and grammatical errors took what is very entertaining (if overdone) story line and made it only mediocre.

I enjoyed the book, but was a bit disappointed as I started off reading the Emerilia series which is far better as far as editing goes. There were many points where a sentence would contradict a previous sentence. [SPOILER AFTER THIS POINT] The most notable one toward the end being when Yasu and James were in their room on Chaleel and Yasu was getting out of the shower. He heard her turn off the shower and she was standing in the doorway back in her battle suit, then shes popping her head out the doorway and the water is running in the background again. The chapter ending with her getting back into the battle suit. There were other grammatical errors with words misplaced etc, but this was the most jarring for me. I also would have liked to see a more clear resolution between James and Yasu, preferably around the 75% mark or even just before the Shadow Leader joined them in the conference room.

After being snatched from Earth and deposited on an unknown vessel thousands of young men and women in their late teens and early twenties as well as well as kids as young as ten are thrust into barbaric training to become soldiers for an alien pirate syndicate.

One man Salchar a champion gamer finds himself trapped with his nemesis Yasu. She was the leader of the top rated team and they despised each other. Forced by the aliens to fight other groups of captive humans, Salchar becomes the leader of his group and sets up rules of engagement to ensure that the two groups fighting didn't kill each other. Ultimately, the rules are adopted by all of the groups. Under Salchar's leadership the humans train to become elite warriors.

The Syndicate uses the humans as their fighting force to take over another ship. The Syndicate uses different captive races aboard their ship and the brutal alien race who trained and command the humans expect a mortality rate of 25% and are amazed that at the end of the engagement only one human is killed.

Salchar and the humans are binding their time until they can overthrow their masters. Along with the alien race who were the engineers of the ship an the AI that has secretly been in control of the ship since before the Syndicate pirates took over the ship, the humans and their alien allies takeover the ship and ultimately the pirate's space station. Becoming the Free Fleet the liberated humans and aliens take their retribution out on the Syndicate.

This book is extremely well developed with involved plotlines. The multiple major and minor characters have detailed personalities and interact with each other with distinct objectives. The author has created a universe that is believable and compelling.

I am looking forward to the next book in what is sure to become a very popular series.

My personal rating system

1 Star Couldn't finish the book
2 Stars Didn't really like the book, but was interested enough in the story to finish (Skipping great chunks)
3 Stars The book was okay, finished it and will consider reading more from the author
4 Stars Really enjoyed the book, will check out others by this author
4 1/2 Stars Loved the book, will immediately check out others by author, if asked will recommend book
5 Stars LOVED the book, will immediately check out all others by author, will pre-emptively recommend book to ALL my book friends

I loved it and expect I'll be rereading it again in the future. This book is a solid 4 and a half stars which I've bumped up to five as the store doesn't do half stars.

"The Recruitment Rise of the Free Fleet," Book 1 of the series, is at best, the storyboard for an anime production or an Xbox/PlayStation game.At its worse, it's a TOTAL TRAIN-WRECK(caps intentional). Reading the author's note twice to confirm, after the first few chapters, he is allegedly a grown man, who serves as a "...infanteer in the Canadian Military." How can an adult, who speaks the English language, put forth such an absolute mess of a book? It's as if he is illiterate and strung a bunch of broken text messages together. This book is beyond bad and deserves ZERO stars.

I apologize to the other reviewers who treated this book harshly-you all were so very right and I should have stayed away.

Some serious flaws, like punctuation placement wherein words are all wrongly emphasized, or the main character's personality which feels so unfamiliar with how we typically see competitive gamers. While his background may justify some of it, but somehow his quirks still feel unnatural. The worst offender has to be where one character (Monk's wife Caroline) is alive at one point (assault of a space station), then is revealed to be dead (after getting killed in the assault of mentioned space station). It's cringe-worthy and definitely takes a lot out of immersion. Really hoping an edit of this book is done because the potential is wasted so much. As for the mechas... well, while I can definitely see the slight unrealism with giant robotic suits compared to the smaller ones depicted here, the story gets a big minus because they're less mecha and more exo-suit or advanced body armor. Also, an alien named Eddie with a cowboy accent? Seriously? A potential for building alien lore and culture, and the author wastes it on western themes? And no, having quirks does little to detract from that.

This book starts off rather boring and lackluster but evolves into something else. The plot comes to fore and you get a sense of being there. It's not a must buy if you like Sci-Fi and War then the series gets better. I will say that I stopped reading this book a few times before finally getting to a point where it held my interest. There are a bunch of basic grammar mistakes in this 1st book - but less in the follow-ups.

Overall I am happy that I got the series now and recommend them.

Very much enjoyed this book. Combination Enders game, Starship Troopers and Doc Smith. Very fast moving with some good characters and twists. Interesting tension be main characters. Reasonable well written, only issue is main character gets into a little bit of a rut.. Recommended read

This is a wonderful story. Start to finish, it's action packed, and I'm anxious to get started on his second book in this series, Coming home. My one issue with this story is that there are numerous editorial issues, which are quite annoying. That said, if you have the patience to ignore those editorial issues, this story is a fun and exciting read.

Well done sir. I think you managed to crack into scifi in a way only books like The Lost Fleet have done previously.

Grit. Pain. Tenacity. Risk. Honor. Loyalty. Death. Confusion. And marriage problems that ring completely true... you managed it all. Well done good sir.

I'm into the second book and really enjoying the story. I think it could use a good proof reader and editor to clean up some of the awkward phrasing.I find myself having to stop and re-read at times to try to figure out the meaning of the sentance or paragraph. Maybe the formatting didn't translate well, but in Kindle for ipad, there is no space separation between character /scene shifts causing me to put on the brakes and go back to figure out who, what or where we are in the action. All that being said I'm loooking forward to the rest of the series. Thank you Mr. Chatfield!

Michael Chatfield has created a sci-fi epic (6 books?) that will have you immersed in an action-filled, outer-space world of suspense and drama. His brilliant descriptions of the space ship battles will leave you breathless. The lead character is admirable, complex, and righteous. I had a hard time putting the books down and attending to my rather mundane, normal life each day.

I'm picky about the sci-fi I read, but this was a can't put down for me! It's about kids, but kids who are forced to artificially age in an insanely short amount of time and become fighters for the "good guys", but they aren't really so good. Everyone has to make choices and Salchar decides the choices he makes are going to help him and those around him, which forces him into other choices he never thought he would have to make. I loved it, and I can't wait for more.

This book is pervaded with silliness, and grammatical and spelling errors, like commas inserted in the middle of words. But it is a story about how humans rose up against their alien oppressors and kicked their bottoms - who can not like that?

A follow-on book is promised. I shall not bother to read it.

Chatfield has started a very strong new series with this book. There are some idiosyncrasies, to wit, "gravitytational" that appear in the tale, but by and large they do not interfere with the story. In short , I recommend it heartily. Maybe he just needs a better proof reader.

I normally do not leave reviews, but this book just held my interest from page 1. Even though there were a some grammatical errors, overall the book, in my opinion, deserved 5 stars. It kept my interest throughout and at times was difficult to put down. I am an avid sci-fi reader and this book more than exceeded my expectations. Great storytelling and character development. I look forward to reading the second book in the series, but am disappointed it is the length of most kindle books. I like the 800+ pages of the first book, now the next one is only 400+ pages...oh well. Hope it is as good as the first!

I did not expect this book to go this way. It is a non stop action thrill ride. From the 1st page to the last it never stops. This is only the beginning and I look forward to reading the second book starting now! The book is 90% space marine infantry battles, with a few space based battles. There are many battles and as I said before, it is non stop.

Excellent space opera. Charismatic Leader goes from gamer to..... Well Spoilers ? Fun ride with enough unique tech crossovers to make it interesting. Some grammar and autocorrect errors but doesn't throw off the story.

Snatched from earth. A few thousand humans are press ganged into alien service. Some nice twists and turns along the way. The usual minor grammar glitches from a self publish novel. Could be building into the grand space opera I tend to like.

This was a decent read. I liked the story but the editing was horrorible. Misspelled words, misused words and incomplete sentences drove me crazy. Hopefully corrections have been made to the next book.

Have just finished Free Fleet 1 & 2. OUTSTANDING!!! Mr. Chatfield has created a great series, with great character development, fast paced action, and built the desire of his readers to want MORE!!! Don't have a choice, so must wait for the third installment... Please put your writing talent into MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE!!! Yes, I recommend Mr. Chatfield's Free Fleet highly... Five out of Five Stars!

If you're looking for a fast-paced science fiction novel with plenty of action and cool technology, this is a great book to check out. Not only that, but it also has entertaining characters, both human and alien. I found myself really caring what happened to these characters, and thoroughly enjoyed learning more about them. I am looking forward to seeing what happens next!

I loved it! It was a story that I binge-read in two or three days once I sat down to read it! The aliens are truly fascinating and the whole plot line is so unique and didn't leave me confused. It is a must read for any sci-fi fans out there who love aliens, battles in space, and a whole new twist on this genre!

Story has potential, but the writing is as if English is not the writers native language. words are used incorrectly and inappropriately. It is also written with very abrupt and very short paragraphs or phrasing.