D. Campbell

Fun swords & magic story

Revisado: 10-10-24

This was a great story. The characters were entertaining and multidimensional. Sometimes with this type of story, the characters tend to be a bit shallow. In this particular book, while there may not have been a ton of time spent on any individual character other than the main character, there was still a nice diversity of character types and personalities that would continue on through the rest of their appearance in the book.
Each of the various opponents that the main character came across, had their own motivations that were believable and not just a pop-up target for the MC to knock down.

As someone who rereads books they appreciate, I'll definitely reread this one in a couple years. Based on this book, I'll definitely reread more books by this author.

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loved the dual narrators!

Revisado: 03-20-24

This was a fun story, but the male and female narrators really brought the characters to life. Differing and distinct voices for each character made it really easy to follow the dialogue which is sometimes hard to do in audio books.

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The narrator was awesome

Revisado: 02-25-24

Erin has now become one of my preferred narrators. Having listened to more than a thousand audio titles, she has become one of my top ten favorite narrators to listen to.
As to the story, while this is another of the game become life story types, there is some good ideas and an interesting take or three. The way the characters progressed and behaved was believable.
If you're looking for a fun adventure story, this would be a good option in my opinion.

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Best wrap up of a series in a long time

Revisado: 08-06-23

So many series out there just peter out, or never wind up ending. I don't know if there's going to be a follow on book to the series, but this was a wonderful culmination of the previous books. I love when an author can give the reader a complete story arc, it's something that's missing in a lot of today's current television series. Sadly, books frequently fall under the same effect whether it be due to an author's loss of interest in that particular series or if we wind up losing an author way too early. So thank you Marco, for what you've done with this book.
I do wish they had stuck with the narrator Daniels for the entire series, but Groves did a pretty good job as well.

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Strongly recommend *after* reading series

Revisado: 01-04-22

This was a great story. I would strongly recommend reading this one after having read the series though. This is a prequal to the Renegade Star series. The author wrote one of the main characters from the series to be much more competent and world wise by the end of this book than she appears for quite some time in the series. If you follow this book with Book 1, 2, etc from the main series, the character seems to be a bit disappointing/jarring in the discrepancy between the end of this book and the first few of the main series. That doesn't mean that she is poorly written in the series, just that it's a bit distracting and might diminish your enjoyment of the character in those first few books.
Taking this story on it's own and ignoring my previous comments, this book is a lot of fun. Some of the mistakes that the character makes are ones that we see in our own lives/friends/etc. that happen when we are at a similar age and maturity. Chaney is able to navigate some of those developmental moments without falling into the 'angsty teenager' trap as most authors writing 'coming of age' characters seem to fall into. This is a much deeper story line than "Little Orphan Annie .... IN SPAAACCCEEEE" but you could look at it as a smash up between the story lines of Little Orphan Annie and La Femme Nikita in a somewhat sci-fi setting.

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Inexplicably weakened characters

Revisado: 07-21-21

I was incredibly disappointed and irritated by the character choices the author made in this book.

One of the main characters in this series was a Commodore and then Admiral in the first book. He seemed very competent in delegation and looking at problems from all angles to optimize decisions. In this book, not only is he incapable of doing that to even the slightest degree, but by his own internal dialogue, doesn't even think there ARE any other legitimate points of view. Even being out of his depth and under stress doesn't explain how he could so completely change character. A strung out heroin addict trying to get their next fix keeps more of themselves than this character does.

That character's wife, when introduced, was a strong woman who in previous books was knowledgeable about the paths of power and how to navigate some of the areas the Admiral was deficient. She's almost a non entity in this book and completely ineffectual. I was hoping to see her develop extensively in this book. If the author wasn't listed the same on all three books, I would have assumed the original author died and the publisher hired another author who wanted to finish in their own way.

While I like this author and almost all of their books, this one was pretty bad as far as continuity. if it was a stand alone book, I'd likely give the story 2.5 stars. As part of a series, it's worse.

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Character(s) is so stupid! Frustrating.

Revisado: 12-06-20

I'll likely read this book in its entirety, but 7 chapters in, I'm so frustrated by the two main characters that I'm moving on.

One character is a Laiden master trader and the other a Terran professor. Yet neither of them can seem to understand that there are other views outside their own world views. How can any person reach near the top of a professional hierarchy and be so frustratingly stupid? Not ignorant, just stupid.

While I like the writing of some of this series, I can't bring myself to continue at this time. Out of the 2700+ scifi books I've read, I've only dropped a book 6 times.

If you've read this book yourself and had similar issues, yet read it through, please comment and let me know if it got a LOT better or not. I dislike leaving stories incomplete and will struggle through if there is hope.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

Great military story, horrendous narration.

Revisado: 06-10-20

With my daily commute and love of reading, I go through several audio books every. That being said, unless this audio book is re-released with a complete overhaul, I won't be listening to it again. I like the story enough, I'll have kindle read with it's robotic voice, the ebook on my phone's tinny speaker phone instead of listening to this. It'll be better that way (I tested it at the end of the book just to crosscheck myself). I'll try to provide enough detail to be helpful to those considering this audio title.

1) The narrator does not always keep the same voice for the characters, even within the same chapter. The major characters have this happen less often, but even they have this happen periodically.
2) Periodic music inserts at an excessive volume. They sometimes are cross themed to what was just being or even is being read.
3) Sometimes, it seems like the narrator had forgotten to read a line, so they came back, recorded that line, and inserted it in the middle of the dialogue. Seemingly not a bad thing, the character voice, intensity, tonality, etc is completely different with no attempt to blend them. If you don't have a large enough budget to cover a good editor, they could still re-record a particular paragraph instead of just one sentence in the middle. That would allow for a preceding and trailing pause to hide the edit in. This item is likely an issue that can be laid at the feet of an editor or producer and not the narrator, but it still effects the enjoy-ability of the book.
4) Mispronunciations galore. Being an avid audio book listener, I can cut a narrator a lot of slack to further my ability to sink into a book. When a particular word or phrase appear many times and/or are a focal object within a story, for the love of Pete... PLEASE, please, please, look up the pronunciation of these words or ask someone who knows how to do so. One specific and egregious example in this book is "Krav Maga".

The story itself is a lot of fun. Think of the movie Shooter with Mark Whalberg, or the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan series. The plots are all different of course, but the character path and the 'hero' of the story strike me as quite similar.

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A good beginning

Revisado: 05-31-20

The entirety of this book would make for a great beginning for a much longer story. While the story jumps around from time period to time period, the transitions aren't too jarring. If you allow yourself to invest in the story, you'll be disappointed at the end of the book.

All of that being said though, if the author ever turns this into a full story, I'll buy it immediately. The concept for this book was intriguing and a good beginning to what could be a fascinating story.

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So many stupid decisions by characters

Revisado: 07-07-19

I spent most of this book castigating characters for stupid choices that drove the plot. The story could have still occurred without so many bad choices that were obvious even to most of the other characters around them. Not a bad book, but quite frustrating.

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