Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: Almost kept me away!!!

This was the first Btech novel I read as it was the first published. I thought it was so bad and I had so many better books to read in my library, I held off reading another Btech novels. I assumed that the others would also be as bad and didn't read another until boredom and a long bus ride caused crack open one of Stackpole's gems. I was hooked. The combat sequences and political intrigue of this book seem almost childish compared to the later books. The *only* reason I didn't give this book one star is because someone had to break ground for the other novels in the Battletech universe. I just wish this one would have been better.