I'll repost my review from the ARPG discord. First concerning the "Pulse" rifle.
You don't just mix up something like that. I first thought that maybe they were using the Phased plasma pulse rifle, but those aren't common guns, and every pulse rifle in the book is like that. And the pistols are little energy laser things as well, and they definitely weren't the EVA pistols. It's consistently immersion breaking. That's such a fundamental thing, don't know how no one noticed that. And the nonsense catheter thing. Come on, how can the writer miss such a thing? How can 2 consultants not see that? How did Gaska miss that? If they weren't doing the proofreading, then who was? Did the book even get looked over by editors and proofreaders? This gave me River of Pain flashbacks...
It's really annoying cause there was so much to like in the book, I'm someone who really enjoyed it. Such great world building in idea, but the execution was so mixed... Written well to invoke emotion, literally got teary at the end, but then konstantly "guv" throughout the book read very poorly whenever the British accents were involved by the narrator and you get quite the chaos of emotions.
I loved so much of the book and hated so many of the details.
Proofreading is so needed going forward. SM used to do this sometimes, but it seems he's no longer with the franchise. If Clara and Gaska are consultants, I'd like that they proofread these things when we're paying such great attention to the world building in the EU through the glorious RPG.
If they don't have time, someone needs to get a competent person doing this. It really did ruin a potentially great experience reading this.
I wanted to love the book, but at most I can just like it. It was such a rollercoaster ride of great and horrible details. It could've been a great book if an editor just looked at the book in more detail.... And this mixed novel is a crucial point in the history of the franchise, it sets up big things or should I say, starts them off. These awful details in the novel were so easily fixable...
But yeah, the aliens were mostly treated great which is rare, though they were a bit slow at times. The end was emotional and even though Davis and the little girl were a bit cringe at the beginning, they packed an emotional punch by the end, actually got me caring for them. The political situation is intriguing, but the dialogue from New Albion and God's Hammer was at the edge of annoying and emersion breaking.
I get the situation, I agree with the critique and the author's views, but it was cringe calling it 3WExit. It could've been done more believably with the portrayal. I get the author likes writting Victorian fiction, but it didn't mesh well here as far as style goes.
The parody elements kinda seemed annoying and offensive to the EU. That type of parody does not jive well with the EU.
And as I thought, Titan asked him to use Chad and Davis...
Also, yeah the author being salty on Twitter cause people didn't like the book makes me sad. Nobody should be explicitly rude to him and bash him or the fans who like the book, but seeing his replies is disappointing.