I love this author. His Iron Dragon series is top notch.
This book was way too ‘prequel’ than it should have been. It’s written well, just not really sci-fi. More like dystopian future.
The author’s politics are most likely much like my own, but I felt like I was listening to a 14-hour virtue signal rather than a good fiction story.
The narrator, while blessed with a fantastic voice for audiobooks, needed a better editor. I became frustrated and distracted by his deep sighs between paragraphs, heavy breathing between sentences, and occasional swallowing *or maybe wetting his whistle* throughout.
I will read the sequel, but only because I like the characters. I really hope that the next book is more of what I expected from this one.