“Hell, Yeah!” is Military Action Adventure Space Opera, aimed at a specific readership: young, male and rebellious. In order to keep that reader involved there needs to be a whole lot of rebellion, violence, humour, and sex. And very little theme.
The main attraction for the book is humour. Characters have names like Slaughter, Grimfoyle and Odious. Acronyms are a specialty, including “Forward Imperial SecuriTy Service,” “Daily Intelligence Review Transmission,” and “Combat Armament and Reactive Armor Protective Advanced Combat Equipment,’ which the author was forced to admit was a bit of a stretch.
Ships are called Chernobyl, Putin, and Richard Nixon. They are filled with creative weaponry like “antimatter death missiles,” and costumes such as “calf-hugging, high heeled jackboots.” And every title has “Death” in it: “Death Stalker,” “Death Lord,” and “Master Chief Death Runner.” Other bits of random creativity sprinkle the story. “Odious had once taken a personality test. It came back negative.” I would have appreciated more of this fun creativity.
When it comes to the sex attraction, I’d say it underperforms. There’s certainly enough talking about sex (humorously kinky), but very little action.
As far as military action, there is galactic-scope mayhem in a few major battles, but not the amount needed to keep the teenage mind focused when the jokes flag.
Underneath the flippancy there is serious research and yes, a theme. The chapter on psychological interrogation techniques was interesting and thoroughly explained. There are also chapter divisions, each with a page or so of galactic history, none of which has much to do with the real story. Except for the odd entertaining non-sequitur, these read a whole lot like a history textbook.
And the rest of the story is devoted to the main character’s attempts to hold her position in an evil empire while acting on a twisted but basically humanistic morality. That part works.
A fun read for Military Action fans, but a bit too much serious stuff.
Four Stars
This review was originally posted on Reedsy Discovery.
