Review of At the Queen's Command: The First Book of the Crown Colonies

I picked this up at Borders.  It's an alt history with magic.  There are elements of steampunk.  I got bored after chapter 48 (68 chapters, 430 pages).  If you've had American History 101 it will take you no time to peg the book to baseline history.  There are zombies.  There's straight monogamist people angst over marriage and fidelity (and infidelity).  There's a lot of macho posturing BS since I think this is a "guy" book with an entire buddy-trip motif where our heroes go off into the woods and become friends for life after facing death together.  This book is sooooo not written for me.  I picked it up because it was alt history and there's magic.  I was willing to put up with the zombies and the whole gritty military fiction trappings and would even skimmed over the trite straight people "ripped from the pages (and bodices) of Harlequin" parts right up until I got really bored.  The motherland finally sends the professional army to deal with problem their colonial subjects have dutifully reported.  The commander is an incompetent and, in order to save the day, our heroes are going to have to "fix" the problem despite of him.  OK.  My canoe tippeth over.  i.e., "The most intelligent course of action is precluded by orders from a high-ranking ignoramus, on the basis of a transparently flawed rationale."  This is especially galling when vast numbers of people are going to die because of said ignoramus and he is going to get away with it because our heroes need a foil rather than a villain to be destroyed. 
So I skipped to the end to see if I had guessed the correct war and battle (yep) and see how the bodice ripping had turned out (I got most of that right) and if anything unexpected had happened in the magic department  (nope).  So I put it down and it goes in the Book & Music exchange box.