Locum Tenens: A Book Review

 Hey guys. It's December now, school is finishing up, so that means a lot of reviews will be coming soon, as well as some other things I hope! Keep posted on that. I'm going to try to schedule out my next semester better so I can get everything I need done, including blog posts. Today I have a review for you! The first two volumes of Locum Tenens, a young adult sci fi story.

 I was unable to find an image of the story for some reason, so I'll just link you to the Amazon page here.

Info:  Mike wasn't meant for military training. He studied hard to get the scores needed for advanced schooling, only to be coerced by his community to take his brother's place, where military Inductees face life and death in the Agoga. Will he survive?

Okay, so I usually review only for Christian publishers, and after reading this story I'll probably be going back to that. But here is my full review to explain myself. This is difficult to write.

 The characters... I liked the characters pretty well. Mike was an adorable, nerdy character. Those are my favorite kind. If a story has a nerd in it, I'm hooked. I just love them to death. There were also some likable recruits and less likable ones. There were many military heads in the story, some I liked more than others. There wasn't a whole lot of character development in the first two installments, but more on that later. But I did like Mike's narration.

The story... The story was intriguing. The idea of some horrible accident happening that required a less than physically fit boy to take his brother's place at an intense and deadly military school was pretty riveting. I wanted to find out what was going to happen to Mike. The fact that all of the technology used actually exists in mind blowing. Like... that is so cool! I really liked the plot and wanted to read more when I finished.

The grammar was pretty good, but there were a couple places that words were omitted, and perhaps some typos placed. That's not a big deal to me. What a reader should know before purchasing is that Locum Tenems is in a serialized sort of format. The book is being released in volumes, and only two are currently out. They're extremely short books. If I focused I could probably read them from half an hour to an hour. That being said, if you're really busy, they're great for just a quick read. It was unfortunate that the stories had to end at climactic times, especially the second volume, but I think that must be the author's intention to keep people reading.

 What I disliked the most about this series are the moral issues. Many might think that sounds so stiff or whatever, but I am a Christian, and this is a Christian blog. Most of my readers are probably Christians, and since I review many YA Christian books, I have to be honest with my reviewers so that they don't read something they wouldn't want to. Once I started seeing some of the content of these books I didn't really want to review them, but I need to post it. There was too much implied sexual content for a book of this age range. It wasn't as if anything happened, but there was crude sexual humor implied. I don't want to go into details on it because it makes me uncomfortable. I suppose the author was making an attempt to show what young boys are like, but I think he could have chosen a better method. There were also a few cuss words scattered throughout, something else I'm not much of a fan of. The point is I can't recommend this to my readers. Because I rate my books half on quality and half on morals, I'll give this story two and a half stars. It would have been three or four without the extra that I had to take it a notch down on.

 Thanks for reading!

~ a rambling author

 I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.