This was such a confusing story with the author swapping names for the same characters throughout.
Although there is plenty of action the writing style left a lot to be desired being over descriptive and making hard reading in places.

I don't like writing bad reviews. I don't like giving up on a book. And I seriously don't like to write a review for a book a gave up on.

But Retrospect just wasn't for me. I tried several times, but I couldn't handle the writing style. So in the end I gave up.

Retrospect was not for me. The overly wordy style was annoying. It really seemed that the author used a thesaurus to find the most complicated words he could find for the simplest things. Such as; "Jonah stopped running. Trigarious' peripheral wits caught the action and he too adjusted his foot speed" instead of just saying "Trigarious stopped too". It takes the fun out of reading and makes it a chore.

Many times there are words thrown in that make no sense at all in the context of the sentences. "Trigarous steadied his voice to mask beating lungs from the previous jog" "Jonah activated hip flexors and propelled his muscular momentum once more, and Trigarious followed".

While small things like a flower beside the road get explained in excruciating detail, big things, like the Novi (Novus) themselves are barely described. They are somehow altered humans with red eyes.

I simply gave up. The story just wasn't compelling enough to get me to wade through it.

A departure from my normal reads although sci-fi was de rigeur for me in the 60s, and I felt it time to return. The story itself is a fairly typical taut political-social thriller but moved into the 35th century. In many of my recent reads I have despaired of decent descriptions of places, of context, as they often have narrative and little else. I cannot despair with Mr DeMinico's descriptions. They are detailed and you can certainly see in the mind's eye many of the gismos and technical 'advances' he has stretched from a familiar 21st century perspective. You were certainly breathless in the vehicle chases up and down roadways around the cities. I'm not so sure about the characters though. We have humans (possibly technically enhanced) who apparently live in the northern hemisphere and we have novi (red eyes and living in the southern hemisphere although these geographical statements in chapter 1 seem irrelevant). There is also the occasional alien but in a minor role only. I have little idea who the novi are, other than "From this industrialised strain, a new race born from man - the novi." This and a bit more at 48% into the e-book.. Given the importance of their role in the story this is frustrating. The one occasion when their speech is portrayed it seems sort of Spanish-Portuguese-Native American of sorts. As the novi, some of them anyway, are the main terrorists it would have been good to know more about them earlier to help set the scene. There are sufficient chases and gun battles between Jonah, the human Agent for good, and Jax and Trigarous, the bad guys. to keep the most battle hardened reader satisfied - lots of brain, blood and gore flying around from laser attacks. Once I had got to grips with the convoluted way of saying some things reading got easier and fair hummed along. Not convinced that this form of speech is likely to be prevalent in the 35th century given modern day indications that we'll be communicating in signs, emojis and 'text-speke' before long!! I was also rather amused at the fairly frequent use of "squished" which appeared well through the book and then obviously found favour with the author for some reason. It took me back decades to the film High Spirits with Peter O'Toole, Daryl Hannah and Liam Neesom - the one who was accused of squishing. Still, I enjoyed the book moderately, plenty of good descriptions even if the characters were a bit too 'action man' at times. I have to admit to having some mixed feelings about the end "The saga will continue".. Thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for an advance copy in return for my honest review.