If, on the other hand you are looking for a modern-day Heinlein then you can stop reading now, these aren't the pages you're looking for. If you're hankering for the old spirit of Star Trek, well at least the more humorous episodes, with perhaps a little Starship Troopers blended in then freshly seasoned with some Blake's 7 then this is the place to come! Alanson strikes an excellent balance between injecting plentiful humour and making the story serious enough and the action tough enough to make you care. I'm genuinely baffled by the glowing reviews of this book. This book is a great illustration of why a consistent tone is so vital. There are two interesting ideas for books here - one hard-boiled military tale in the tradition of Heinlein et al, and another in the tradition of Adams etc. Honestly, I would have suggested to Alanson that he decided what sort of book he wanted to write and stick with it. If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Columbus Day? In fact, I think he rescued what is a pretty poor book.

Bray really brought our narrator to life. I totally bought R.C Bray's characterisation of Col. There are usually compromises to be made when reading sci-fi, which is frustrating but it wouldn't put me off entirely. Has Columbus Day put you off other books in this genre? I think it takes more skill than Alanson has to splice the two, if it were even possible. Write a serious book about a soliders' experience of cutting edge war in space, or a lighthearted satire of humanity when shown to be idiotic in the face of greater intelligence. However, it's not really either element of the book that really bothered me, it was the rather crude splicing of what felt like two different ideas together. Humour is really difficult to pull off (Adams was a master) and Alanson frankly isn't all that funny - obvious gags about Facebook and Cat videos don't really cut it.

Suddenly we're in Douglas Adams territory - being invited to laugh at ourselves as a species.

However, the abrupt shift in tone halfway through the book (the character 'Skippy' is introduced) is jarring. There's very little hard sci-fi here - by limiting us to our Sergeant's perspective we're never allowed/invited to grasp any of the mind-blowing changes that alien contact might have initiated, and I was left dissapointed by the limiting of perspective. Indeed, the book contains all the gung-ho Americana you want, if that's your thing (it's not my thing). The book is written from the perspective of a Sergeant in the US Army. What disappointed you about Columbus Day? Heinlein or Adams? Maybe pick one and run with it

Columbus Day by Craig Alanson