Poor Man's Fight by Elliott Kay

High school senior Tanner Malone has bombed the Test, a high-stakes exam that establishes how much he owes for his corporate-funded education. Burdened by a crushing debt that rules out college, Tanner enlists in the navy of Archangel, a star system with four terraformed worlds. But he hasn't factored in the space pirates. Just as Tanner begins basic training, the government ramps up its forces to confront a band of rowdy raiders who are wreaking havoc in the void. Led by complex and charismatic Captain Casey, the outlaws love a little murder and mayhem, but they are also democratic, egalitarian, and devoted to freeing each new recruit from debt and corporate oppression. Assigned to the front lines, Tanner soon finds himself caught in the crossfire between ruthless foes, cruel comrades, and unforgiving space. Can he do his duty when good and evil look so much alike?

Die hard in space, pretty much abandons the interesting corporate dystopia premise once the main character enlists in the navy to pay down his debts.

Too much space opera, too much politics, not enough milscifi.

Pretty good military space opera. I am reminded of the works of [a:Marko Kloos 6606349 Marko Kloos https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1565448645p2/6606349.jpg] and [a:Evan Currie 15153514 Evan Currie https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1487997311p2/15153514.jpg].

I'm pretty sure I loved this book. I ended up staying up an extra 3 hours on saturday night reading.

The synopsis of the book certainly does it justice (Though I rarely read those anymore, I just check out the samples on amazon). The story jumps around a bit between a couple characters. Its hard to tell who the main character is, but for whatever reason it seems to work out.

I had trouble keeping track of some characters. It didn't help that I was on an e-reader and wasn't really able to flip back a few pages quickly. One paragraph will be the main character, the next will be from the point of view of someone he's interacting with. It got ..distracting near the end of the book.

Its very obvious to me the book was self-published (I had to do a big of google searching to confirm). It defiantly needed a bit of editing.

That being said, I would still absolutely recommend it to other people. Especially since the book is only $2.99 on the kindle store.