I’ve loved every one of the bubble gum sci fi books in the Odyssey series. All the action and macho swagger was so much fun when fighting pernicious aliens. But in grounding this story completely on the Earth, this became almost racist with its treatment of the Eastern enemy and ‘rah rah’ North America jingoism. After about 20%, I realized I was starting to hate these earlier incarnations of characters I’d rooted for and enjoyed in the Odyssey series. This wasn’t enjoyable at all and I almost felt dirty reading it.
Story: Before the Odyssey set out on its journey, the characters of the series were facing a war that would tear apart the Earth. This is the beginning of that war, when the Eastern Block of China and India develop a new technology that threatens the West and their allies. Tinkerer Erik Weston may have stumbled across the key to the Block’s technology and a way to save the West from complete annihilation. With the help of a skinny kid named Stephanos, he might just save America!
I have to wonder that the book has such a gung ho “Make America Great again!” narrative in this current political climate – but written by a Canadian. There is so much American swagger that I felt hair growing on my chest (and I’m female). The whole premise of the book is that America had fallen behind its Eastern counterparts (excluding Japan) and were no longer the ‘great nation’ they had been. But of course, individuality, Western creativity, and American spirit will always win against narrow minded, robotic, Eastern adversaries (read: Chinese). This all just felt so wrong.
Because I listened to the audio version of this book, I did not notice any of the grammatical or other errors noted by others. But I am assuming Currie has decided to forgo a publisher and self publish – with all the pitfalls that entails. Even the storywriting could have used a strong editor to balance so many issues that were offputting in the book.
The narrator was decent and had to do a lot of accents that admittedly after awhile began to sound cliché. I do not think he could have avoided that situation due to the writing, however. I will not be following this prequel series further.