Just didn’t work for me.

I don’t like giving negative reviews and generally I’m a fan of Jake Bible’s work, but this one is a bit of a hot mess. The book starts out with a good inciting incident, with a promise of plenty of action and adventure to come. And then the book slams on the brakes. Seriously, after the intro the book slows to a crawl. The next hour and a half to two hours is pretty mind numbing. We spend time getting to know two characters, Parveet and Torn. You think spending so much time with them that they are the main characters right? Well after those first two hours with them, you don’t see more than a paragraph or two with either of them for the next 4 hours or so, and even when you do see them they aren’t doing anything special. No big loss as neither one seems all that interesting, and Parveet is a straight up A-hole…but you know what? She isn’t the only unlikeable character in the book. None of them are particularly likable. In fact everyone is pretty much the same exact character. The countless soldiers/mechanics/mech pilots all seem to be carbon copies of each other, insane caricatures of the ultimate take-no-crap soldier. Seriously, if it weren’t for Andrew Wehrlen’s narration you wouldn’t be able to tell one character form the other. They all talked the same and acted the same.

I was hopeful when the action finally did pick up, but other problems popped up soon there after. Not problems for our characters, but problems with the story itself. These aliens sounded exceptionally cool. Very smart and adaptive. After one encounter with humans they learned how to pilot human drop ships, how to craft armor, use human weapons, and more. And yet for all this brilliance that they displayed at learning and adapting, their only strategy against the landing party is run wave after wave of their people into energy fences and die instantly? Sorry, that doesn’t add up. If you make the aliens brilliant enough to learn to fly our ships and use our weapons they have to be smart enough not to walk into what is basically a giant bug zapper.

Then we get to the end where Parveet and Torn reemerge as somewhat key characters. The problem is there seems to be two different storylines playing out, the Parveet/Torn story of breaking away from Earth and the story of what is happening on the planet with the aliens. And honestly the two stories didn’t gel together. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention the running ‘son of butch’ joke. It might have been mildly amusing the 1st time it was told, but by the 100th?? Sorry you ran that one into the ground after the 2nd repeating of it.

Seriously, I’ve enjoyed many of Bibles books in the past. They always come off like B movies to me, which in my opinion is not an insult. They tend to be fun, over the top, with plenty of ‘bad acting’, the kind of thing you’d see on the syfy channel, but this one just didn’t work for me at all.

Now as for Andrew Wehrlen’s narration, I found that to be quite good. As I mentioned I am generally a fan of Jake Bible and so I am somewhat familiar with Mr. Wehrlen’s voice work as he has recorded quite a few of Bible’s books. Each time I hear his work I come to appreciate him more and more. The cast of characters in this book was extensive to say the least and yet he managed to convey a unique voice for each. I see it as a plus whenever I see his name attached to a book.

I received a copy of this audio title for free in exchange for an unbiased review.