This is one of those series I tried so desperately to love. All the elements for a fantastic story are here. There are tons of opportunities for deep world building, complex character development, interesting social commentaries, and varied introspection from a large cast of characters; but the author just swung and missed.
The main character is a shallow recreation of Nathan Fillion in firefly. Every time there is a chance for him to express his world views, he does so in such a hamfisted, juvenile way that despite agreeing with his positions, I just have to shake my head at how awfully it’s represented. Every cringy dad joke he makes is followed up by an explanation of why it’s funny, completely destroying any small semblance of humor there was.
The female co-star of the series is basically Dash’s female clone, acting the same way he would in any circumstance, making her character unbelievable and indistinguishable from Dash. Most of the other characters follow this same path with minor variations. Each has a single character trait and all they are allowed to do is be that one thing.
The opportunities for world building are truly immense, but it seems like the author skipped over trying to give any details about the universe that these characters live in. There is era or reference date given, so we have no clue what year it might be in relation to our own. We have no information provided telling us what region of the galaxy these people are supposed to be living in. There’s minimal references to governing bodies, corporations, power structures, or anything else that would tell us what exactly the conditions of this reality are. The only thing we know is that a broke courier has a spaceship flying around in who knows where, when, where they’re from, or what their history is. It’s almost like the world didn’t exist until Dash was born and a mythical alien race was retconned into his universe and everyone around is coming to terms with it.
A lot of people will complain about the technobabble but honestly that is one thing I didn’t mind. It’s the only thing in this entire series that ever really gets a decent explanation. If there is FTL travel, I definitely want to know how it works and what the rules are. The author did a decent job of explaining this at first, but as more technologies were introduced, they just sort of added arbitrary terms on top of the existing ones and we are just supposed to understand that it’s better.
The over arching story is actually pretty decent if you can stand to ignore everything about how the main cast interacts with it. An ancient alien race fighting a galaxy wide war against generic bad guys with poorly defined motivations is a sci-fi trope so I can deal with that. It’s the way that the characters bumble through it while preaching their values apropos of nothing that is obnoxious. As I mentioned, I completely agree with all of the themes represented in these books, but there is absolutely no subtlety, complex decision making, or true introspection going on. It’s just a constant barrage of hamfisted rhetoric. Maybe this is good for a 12 year old who is unable to perceive nuance, and that seems to be the target audience here, but as an adult it’s pretty painful.
The battles should be the most entertaining part of this whole thing, given how shallow every other aspect of the stories are, but every battle comes down to Dash fighting aliens, almost losing, and then the words “then something flew past me” and someone saves him. No characters are at risk of being lost, despite constantly suggesting that someone might have died. By book 3 you will be well aware that no one you like is ever going to die. Maybe that’s good for some readers, but I’d definitely have preferred if they took the GoT approach of taking someone to let the reader know that no one is safe.
The narration is decent. A lot of mispronunciation of terms and he tends to jump back and forth a few times on how he is going to pronounce certain terms. The accents are pretty annoying though. It’s great when a narrator can bail different accents, but this one cannot and shouldn’t try. Some of the accents given just did not fit the character they were given to at all.
In summary, I made it through book 10 of this series. I’d you find that this book, the first book, is a little too shallow and you’re hoping that they will go into more depth as time goes on, don’t bother. It’s not going to happen. This could have been a great series if each book was twice as long and they didn’t keep piling on 2 dimensional characters as fast as possible. if you’re buying this book for a tween you want to introduce to space operas… Don’t. There’s too much psuedo world building that goes into specifics that ultimately don’t matter and the characters are too boring to hook their attention. I’d say this is an alright series for a kid who already loves this stuff but isn’t old enough to grasp the complexities and nuance of more advanced reading, but definitely not for any discerning adult.