This author has been recommended to me, so I picked this up when I saw it in my neighbor's getting-rid-of box.

Pretty generic and uninspired space opera. For the way the only main female character (Elena) was written, I would have guessed this was a male author. Her complete passivity and lack of an actual personality or motivations was bad enough, without the main character constantly comparing her to a greyhound or thoroughbred horse. Ugh. And then of course her big "I'm going to do my own thing with my life" breakthrough is to marry someone else (someone she's known for a month) instead of Miles. Which he couldn't accept when it was her choice -- he was only able to be all noble about it once he made the choice to give her up in order to save her life. Ugh and double ugh.

Cardboard cutout characters, completely bizarre and unbelievable plot twists, lots of confusing and impenetrable political maneuvering, etc. But the thing that really got me was the insane credulity of every single character aside from Miles -- apparently he's just so charismatic that anyone will believe any damn thing he makes up on the spot! They're all also very dumb, allowing Miles to come off as insanely clever at all times.

This whole thing was basically ridiculous. Like a Heinlein novel only not as good.