The story has an intriguing, if not well-worn , but that’s it. It reads like an attempt at writing in the style of the OG writers from the 40s and 50s, but it fails at that. The main character is an unobservant dolt. Every other character is portrayed as an NPC. Everything about them other than their names and ranks changes throughout the story. Each makes decisions and statements that are incongruent at best, contradictory at worst. The story line jumps around erratically.
Here lie spoilers…
The crux of the story is about this mysterious ancient ship that is so advance and superior that it not only defeated some allegedly mighty foe 6000 years ago, but destroyed tens of thousands of ships since then simply for being in the same region of space. It is so large that it can house hundreds of smaller ships, can jump to hyperspace, shoot every possible manner of beam weapon, make its own gravity, yadda yadda, but does not possess even rudimentary repair facilities or spare parts storage?
The Terrans are brilliant enough to manipulate the AI at will, but didn’t think to rummage the landing bays for materials to repair the ship? WTF.
I couldn’t listen to more than 2 hours at a time. I kept getting turned off by the cringe-inducing accents and mannerisms.
The narrator may by great at documentaries or school films, but should probably avoid gigs that require more than one voice or accent. The female characters all sound like they are either Jessica Rabbit stand-ins or an angsty teen, and the male characters aside from the captain and the pilot sound like the same guy at different points in his life. The pilot he sounds more vaguely middle-Eastern, Slavic and oddly Canadian. The one thing this Scotsman does not sound like is Scottish.
The only other Vaughn Heppner book I have is Artifact, and it was worth a credit – decent story, great narration. Sometimes you have to try more than one from an author to really get a feel for their work. Not sure whether I’ll try a third.