Children No More (Jon & Lobo, #4) by Mark L. van Name
My rating: 4 out 10 stars
Jon Moore knew that better than most, having learned to fight to survive before he’d hit puberty. So when a former comrade, Alissa Lim, asks for his help in rescuing a group of children pressed into service by rebels on a planet no one cares to save, he agrees. Only later does he realize he’s signed up to do far more than he’d ever imagined.
This book was certainly not the best one in the series. It still classifies as okay (barely) as far as I am concerned but I did indeed hope for something better.
As with the other ones in the series, the book is well written. The dialog (bickering) between Jon and Lobo can be quite entertaining although sometimes a wee bit tiring. It could have been a really good book.
Unfortunately it suffers, at least from my point of view, from the same fault as the previous books. Jon have these powerful nano-machines in his body and he never really gets around to use them. The book just talks about them and constantly harps about how he does not wont anyone to know about them.
The same goes for Lobo. One of the most powerful and sophisticated combat machines around but all he ever does is sit around doing surveillance work, argues with Jon and talks about how sophisticated he is but he never gets around to fire his weapons even once.
In addition most of this book is spent in a captured camp where the story circles about the captured children with some occasional visits buy the bad guy senator. Apart from the initial capture of the camp itself it is not until the very end of the book that something really happens.
Unfortunately the end is somewhat disappointing as well in that the senator which have been worked up as the really nasty bad guy actually gets to walk away. Sure, there’s some hints that Jake, Jon’s con-artist friend, will take him to the cleaners but I was really hoping to read about this guy getting taken down.
Thus, I rate this book as just okay…barely.
My Ramblings 
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