This novel took me quite a time to figure out how I felt about it, but I think in the end I'm going to keep reading the series. 
 The races created for the novel followed the same pattern as the book; standard fare for sci-fi/fantasy and space marines in particular but managing to stand out from the crowd enough to keep me interested. There are standard humans, graceful elf-like creatures, short strong troll creatures, and reptilian enemies yet the interactions between were well thought out and a bit more genuine than I'm used to in this type of novel. 
 For a space marine novel, it was full of solid action, the full gamut of officer jokes and camaraderie, and of course explosions, bodies, and blood. I definitly lost sight of how many soldiers there supposedly were in the novel; at times it felt like there were so many more than the author counted out. 
 In the end, if I wanted original and psychologically intricate races I would be reading David Brin. As it is, this scratched the itch I had for some good old fashioned butt kicking!