Every now and then, I like taking a look at some self-published science fiction books (especially if they’re recommended to me) and see what’s out there. This time I happened upon Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins. The book is basic space opera with ship battles and fairly straightforward good guy and bad guys. But, I don’t mean that in a bad way. The book is a fun, action packed read with some decent characterization. So, let’s check it out.

Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins is a collection of 3 novellas that help setup the rest of the series. It starts with the background of the main character (Jonas Valent), a ex military engineer who backed out of the military life after the last war, who now is the equivalent of an air traffic controller. Except, in his spare time, he’s the leader of a rag-tag bunch of people who sneak onto the military simulation machines and fight anonymous missions against the best cadets in the military academy and always win. Jonas, along with his semi-sentient AI named Alice, are found out as the leader of the gang by the military and given an unusual challenge. If he takes command of a newly restored spaceship with the people who’ve been on his secret team and survives an almost impossible simulation scenario, then all charges will be dismissed and they’ll join the military in an undercover type operation. The book would end a lot sooner if they didn’t survive (and win), so they move forward with finishing the restoration and the rest of the three novellas are their first missions.

The writing is mediocre, at it’s best, with a lot of awkward phrasing and poor descriptions. The book is basically all plot. But the plot just keeps moving forward. It does appear that the author changed his mind about several plot elements after writing them. As an example, the ship our heroes get was supposed to be not affiliated with the main spacestation it came from for both their sakes. That lasted until novella 2 where the first enemy they come across gets it out of the crew immediately. There are several places where the author just hand waved magical science fiction concepts to show how powerful and technologically advanced the society is. But, for the most part, it’s a fun ride as long as you don’t pay too much attention to the details. Mildly Recommended..