Galaxy of Heroes Book

This is a first book, so I'm going to give constructive criticism. I hope that's what the author wants and that it helps him, even if just a little. Due to that, there will be spoilers.

Firstly let me say that I've had the opportunity to read other first novels and couldn't even finish some of them. I did finish this one, so that's a big positive right off the bat. And I didn't finish it just to get it finished. I was genuinely interested in where the story was going and what would happen to the characters.

The prose was a little dry for my taste, but I've experienced that in this type of sci-fi from established authors, so that's not necessarily a deal-breaker I suppose. It just had little flow and no beauty to the use of the language and how the words were strung together. It got the job done as far as telling the story, but it wasn't nearly as enjoyable (to me, a professed book and language snob) as it could have been.

The descriptions of the battles and fights were often confusing to me. Granted, I've had no experience with those types of situations and don't read lots of books where battles play a major role, but I have read some good ones, so I know it can be described so that people like me will be able to keep up with the action.

The characters were decently portrayed. Some of the supporting cast could have used a little more fleshing out, but overall I felt that I knew the characters and understood their motivations. The biggest problem I had was that the characters too often did things that contrasted with what I'd been led to expect about them. Even right at the beginning, before there had been much action, I could have told you that Jace Spade would never have fallen for the not-even-thinly-veiled deceptions by Dr. Mahlis. It was far too predictable and easily spotted, yet Spade blindly and faithfully followed along, despite the fact that he'd been given no reason whatsoever to trust Dr. Mahlis.

Those are my major problems but, like I said, I've seen far worse first novels.