Daisy's Gambit - Scott Baron

   2018; 342 pages.  Book 3 (out of 5) in the series “The Clockwork Chimera”.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Space Opera; Alien Invasion Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Arise, ye Earthlings and Chithiids!  And arise ye Cyborgs and even ye AI units!  You have nothing to lose but your chains!

 

    Well, you also have your lives to lose, since you’ll be going up against the dreaded Ra’az Hok, the destroyers of Earth and enslavers of the Chithiid.  Their technology is superior and their forces are far more powerful than anything we good guys can muster.

 

    But they have one weakness: their home planet is many light years away, and their communications and supply lines between there and planet Earth are vulnerable.  They’re aware of that and they’re in the process of developing a super-fast warp drive.  That project is just about completed.

 

    So despite the long odds of success, now is the time to revolt.  And we just might be victorious if our war plan goes perfectly.

 

    In other words, we’re doomed.

 

What’s To Like...

    Daisy’s Gambit is the third book in Scott Baron’s “Clockwork Chimera” series.  As given below, the author offers the complete series as a 5-book bundle for a very reasonable price, and occasionally discounts it.  I recommend investing in the bundle, since I think this is a series where a lot is lost if you don’t read the books in order.

 

    The action starts immediately, literally in the first sentence, and is a logical follow-up to previous book, wherein the seeds of revolt were first sown.  Now it’s time for the four subjugated races—Chithiids, Cyborgs, Humans, and Artificial Intelligences—to join forces and learn to trust each other.  This is no small task, given that there are some amongst them who are still loyal to the Ra’az Hok.

 

    I liked that the personnel at the good guys' moon base still play a key role in the storyline, even though the settings in Daisy's Gambit are exclusively at various locations on Earth.  The key players include Freya, the juvenile AI that Daisy discovered during her lunar sojourn, and who is imbued with equal amounts of learning ability and naivete.

 

    The ending is laced with exciting fight scenes and resolves the main storyline of attacking the Ra’az communication hubs and warp drive research facility.  Some good guys perish, a deus ex machina pops up to save the day, Daisy and Vince are reunited, and all the surviving Terrans now await the enemy’s inevitable counterpunch.  Things close with a teaser for the next book, Chasing Daisy.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.6/5 based on 478 ratings and 36 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.38/5 based on 397 ratings and 35 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Shemagh (n.) : a headcloth commonly worn in the desert (google-image it).

 

Excerpts...

    “Enter the code 011235813.  The base is on a swivel, and once unlocked, the mechanism will allow you to slide it aside to descend into the facility.  You are ready with the specs on which explosives and detonators to gather, yes?”

    “Yeah, we have all the info, but hang on.  Isn’t that code a bit obvious?”

    “Not to those who do not follow mathematics,” he replied.  (loc. 12018)

 

    “My sword’s a bit of a psychopath,” she said with a grim chuckle as she pulled the blade free from the alien’s chest.  She watched as the last drops absorbed into the surface, leaving the pristine white blade as good as new once again.

    “You like that thing a bit too much,” Sarah quipped.  “You’re not going to be one of those douches who names their sword, are you?”

    “I wasn’t going to,” Daisy joked back.  “But now that you mention it, I think I shall hereafter call it Stabby McStabberton.”

    “Oh God, you’re ridiculous.”

    “Don’t listen to her, Stabby.”  (loc. 13736)

 

Kindle Details…

    Daisy’s Gambit is priced at $3.99 at Amazon right now.  The other four books in the series are all in the $0.99-$3.99 price range, and there is a 5-book bundle, containing the entire series, for only $7.99, which is the format I’m reading.

 

“Who would have thought an artificially intelligent dishwasher would ever fly a warship?”  (loc. 13198)

    There are some nits to pick.  There were 20 cusswords in the first 10% of the book, which is about normal for this series, and Daisy and Vince celebrate their reacquaintance with appropriate ardor.

 

    Once again, not all of the plotlines are resolved.  Something or someone is butchering the wild bears in Colorado, but who-or-what did it is never revealed.  Ditto for the helpful-but-unseen counter-sniper in Rome.  Inquiring minds want to know the answers to these mysteries, and presumably both of them get addressed in the remaining two books in the series.

 

    There are a couple of the kind of spellchecker typos that usually arise in Indie author books, such as berg/burg, world/word, and tell-tale/telltale.  But these were rare enough to not be a distraction.

 

    For me, the main issue was the Planning-to-Doing Ratio.  A lot more pages were devoted to the former than to the latter.  But if the “Intrigue” half of the genre “Action-Intrigue” is your preferred cup of tea, you will thoroughly enjoy Daisy’s Gambit.  This kind of plan-vs-do ratio holds true for the middle book(s) of many series.  I remember thinking the same thing about The Two Towers in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

 

    Overall, Daisy’s Gambit still had enough wit, character-development, and world-building to keep my interest.  After all, overthrowing evil galactic powers takes careful planning, and that’s what is going on here.

 

    7½ Stars.  We'll close with one last nod to the clever password 011235813 cited in the first excerpt, above.  As a math nerd, I greatly appreciated it.