Oh where to start.
Performance wise it’s ok, I find the narration a little annoying but I could see people being ok with it. The narrator’s normal voice is fine for Maddox, seems like a good fit there, and does ok for the pilot with his Scotty style Scotish accent, but beyond them he just doesn’t fit. He does a similar husky voice for every female character which seems really out of place with who the characters are and the moods they should be in making you pay attention to what the actual writing is trying to convey the emotion as being as opposed to what the narrator is performing which is a little jarring.
Writing is also ok. Its a decent story about “alien” invaders and the ragtag group of misfit heroes out to save the empire. The characters are ok, to keep using that word, you have the super spy captain with a secret, the ace fighter pilot that can actually fly anything he can get his hands on (not how piloting actually works), a by-the-book barracks lawyer of a navigator/unofficial first officer who inexplicably has as massive insubordination problem, a criminal mad scientist/psychopath, and a heavy worlder brawler/love interest. Most of these characters are fine, except Valerie drives me up the wall. The author keeps insisting that Valerie is a super professional by the books character. However, she cannot go two consecutive sentences without doing something grotesquely against military protocols and courtesies often to the point of blatant and belligerent insubordination.
It might be the prior service talking but I hate Valerie. Her character is realistic because pieces of shit like that do exist in military organizations, but she is not the type of person you’d want on your team and you’d do everything in your power to steer clear of them. They make a big deal about her being from the streets of Detroit early on and she fusses about how everyone else looks down on her because of that and it’s because of that lack of high class privilege that she’s dead-ended in her career. However, at every turn she proves exactly why she’d be booted to the curb a forever Lieutenant. She has a huge chip on her shoulder, no military bearing, and worse yet spends every second of her duty time trying to trap superior officers with regulation complaints. We don’t get to see a lot of how she treats the junior members of the crew since the story is from Maddox’s point of view, but petty people like Valerie are the worst people to service with let alone under. Worse yet she’s not even good at her job. Right after the crew gets together there’s a perfect scene where Valerie could have proved that she was a hotshot navigator and that despite the attitude she was worth having along, but instead of doing it the entire scene consisted of her fighting with Maddox over regulations and whining about not actually having done her job which was to plot the routes to the exits of the system. Her major contribution seems to be a body to leave behind on the ship, or in the flitter to bring it in and pull Maddox out of whatever problem he’s gotten into. I hate Valerie and honestly that might have colored my opinion of the story because she’s there from the start.
Out side of the complaints about Valerie the story is just ok. The over arching plot is a decent motivator but a lot of the events that occur in the story are a bit contrived and honestly stem from some very stupid decisions that were made when the Maddox was first being sent out on his suicide run. At one point Maddox mentions that they might just be the distraction for the team that was actually completing the mission, and honestly if that had turned out to be the case this would have been an amazing book. But as is it’s an ok schlocky Sci-Fi story that’s geared up to dip into the space opera genre, I might give the second book a try but will probably actually read it since the narration and Valerie might have colored my opinion of this book.