Karen Sandler

I would have loved to have liked this more. The premise is interesting and the world a sort of post racial/new race relations playground, offering readers a new way to divide up the human social dynamic. But I approached this more as a writer than a reader, despite my best intentions. Sandler has a passion for the story and I can feel her enthusiasm; yet it tends to burst forth as way too much world-building (and the dreaded shmeerp, a wonderful term coined by author James Blish to mean a madeup word in sci-fi for which there is an exact equivalent -- say "dozie" for sheep). Sandler's first pages are a minefield of such things, along with the equally dreaded "info-dumps" (too soon, too many). For me, the characters are subservient to all of this in Tankborn, a shame.… (more)