Richard

Nathan Lowell at his Best

Revisado: 06-18-21

This is the kind of feel good story that Nathan Lowell has been a master of since he wrote the first book in the Solar Clipper series. Not that his talents are limited to this, but this is what I love about his writing the most. Tom Taylorson was perfect and brought Mulligan the butler to life masterfully. If your tastes are focused on fast moving military type action, blood and gore this is not the book for you!

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Excellent Continuation

Revisado: 05-11-18

Excellent continuation of Book 1. Not what I would consider to be a deep or thought provoking story, the story moves forward briskly, personalities develop and entertaining new characters are introduced.

Cassandra Campbell's narration is superb. While this story line is very good, I get the impression that she could read a Latin funeral dirge and somehow make it feel like a gripping story. The voices and inflections realistic, emotional and entertaining. No surprise that she is the narrator of choice for so many authors.

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As Entertaining as Ever but a Bit Repetitive

Revisado: 11-13-17

On the bright side, this story is as entertaining as its predecessors in the serious and R.C. Bray does not disappoint in his excellent reading. Skippy is as much of an a*hole as ever, the story is filled with action and the banter is snappy and hilarious. On the other hand, the writing is sometimes repetitive, to the point that pretty much the same sentences (not just the concepts behind them) are reused in multiple chapters. When this occurs, it has the feel of either a mistake in editing or a belief on the part of the author that the listener (or reader) will forget the context in which a new event is occurring. This happens often enough that it borders on being annoying.

All in all, the book was well worth the listen. There is a great cliff hanger and potentially a new story arc at the end that will pretty much force me to buy the next book in the series as soon as it drops.

Audible 20 Review Sweepstakes Entry

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Miltary Sci Fi with Full Story in One Book

Revisado: 06-14-17

This book has a deceptively corny and cliched beginning that almost made me want to stop listening. I am glad that I held on because in the end it turned out to be well written and well narrated fast moving military sci fi. In what seems to be a moderately rare event these days, the book is completely self contained and provides satisfying closure at the end. The story contains a couple of logic glitches but they are easy to ignore and in all but a couple of spots the story and the world it is built in hang together very well. Of course I can not say enough good things about the way Kyle McCarley brings anything he reads to life. The voices are well done and convey emotional content in way way that makes you feel each characters presence as if you were there.

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Like Visiting Old Friends

Revisado: 01-23-17

First, in order to get the most out of this book it is really necessary to have read (or listened) though the original "Trader's Tale" series. All through the story I kept thinking about how great this was for someone who had read the first series and how maybe not quite so much for someone who is completely unfamiliar with the characters and the backstory. There is such a strong tie to the backstory that I felt like I was catching up with old friends and I could imagine how if I had brought along a new companion to such a visit they might feel a bit left out as Ishmael, Pip and I shared old times.

Just for some background, by the end of "Owner's Share" (which I listened to years ago when it first came out) I was not a happy listener. Nathan Lowell is an excellent writer and, in my case and I am sure in the case of many others, his Trader's Tale series left me deeply emotionally invested in the main characters. So as to avoid too much in the way of a detailed spoiler, I will only say that at the end of Owner's Share I felt toyed with, manipulated and wishing I had stopped listening after the first half or so of the story.

In Ashes Born (a great title in many respects) was a bit of a catharsis for me. Just like the main character is finally able to start getting on with his life, somehow, this story gave me a new perspective. It felt good to re-meet the old characters and remember all of the things I enjoyed about the previous series. This new series starts again on the optimistic note that began and permeated most of the first and I really hope that this follow on series can preserve that feeling all the way through. This book brings the story back to the positive story telling style that caused be to become a Nathan Lowell fan at the beginning.

Well worth the read for those who loved the first series all the way through as well as for those, like me, that were disappointed with its ending but have been hoping for a reason to return.

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Rich Story Line and a Great Narrator

Revisado: 09-02-16

Excellent fantasy that takes the time to develop the characters and their relationships. Also includes a good mix of adventure, battles, intrigue, and developing love interests. Nick Podehl does a really nice job with the voices and in conveying emotion. I will be adding him to my list of favorite narrators.

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What is a Hero?

Revisado: 07-26-15

As I started reading this book I could not help but compare it with the movie Edge of Tomorrow where Tom Cruise's character fights aliens over and over again in an attempt to save earth. That is where the similarities end though. This well written story includes a well developed main character and a story line where the motives of the characters and consequences of their actions go much deeper than simply repeating a time circle until the battle is won. In fact, the battles in this story go well beyond the one between the human and the alien and provide food for thought on exactly what is a hero and what experiences make a person into who they are.

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Great End (Maybe) to a Great Series

Revisado: 02-16-15

This series has been a light hearted and truly enjoyable set of stories. As a computer gamer (and engineer) who came of age in seventies and eighties, I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the character's perspectives as they move through the hilariously (and stereotypically accurately) flawed virtual world. As in the previous stories in the series, Scott Meyer's amusement is contagious as he plays with the differing, but equally awkward, social skills of several generations of techno geeks. For those of us who spent our college years living in a world where "Leisure Suit Larry" and "Ultima" were the bomb of gaming and where Star Trek cons were as likely as not to be the pinnacle of your social life, I salute you Scott and Luke! .

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Plenty of Reasons Not To Like This Series

Revisado: 01-07-15

Here we are at book four of this series and I have read and enjoyed every one. The trouble is, that I still do not fully understand why. Until recently, the reasons have well resisted rising to the top of my consciousness.

There are plenty of reasons that I could have not liked this series:

For example:

- Some of the writing is cliché, syrupy and even goofy ("I love you more than life itself", 'You are close to my heart", "I do not want to live without you").

- The author seems to confused about the differences between interstellar space and intergalactic space and between scale of the two. In fact, the sense of scale in this story in terms of dimension, speed and raw numbers sometimes gets so implausible that it crosses the border into silly land at times.

- The "science" in the "science fiction" feels like something out of the old "Buck Rogers" movies or sometimes even more like the old "Twilight Zone".

All that said, I have loved every one of these books and have pretty much done straight through listens on all of them (plenty of credit to the excellent skills of Liam Owen as well). I think it is because Saxon Andrew's stories provide a vision of what things could be like if we were primarily driven by the desire to love and care for one another and the will to find large non-zero sum solutions for our differences. The strength of these themes make me suspend my disbelief on the types of issues described above and instead look at these stories as inspirational fantasy with a science fiction flavor.

I would recommend these books (especially, but not solely, for young adults) not because they are strong examples of the sci fi genre (as I see it, they are not), but because they provide food for thought on where want to go as a civilization. I am very much looking forward to the continuation of the series.

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Well Developed Story Line, Well Developed World!

Revisado: 01-18-14

The author did an excellent job developing the characters, the story line and the world. While the story is generally military sci fi, it touches on social issues and bio ethics in a well interwoven and non preachy way.

Many people have commented that the narration is generally flat with what emphasis there is in the wrong places. While I agree in many respects, I had a somewhat different take and I prefer to withhold or at least temper my judgement on the subject of performance. Thus the neutral rating.

Patrick Freeman has a very good reading voice and at times, clearly demonstrates that he does indeed understand how to breath life into his reading. While many lines are delivered with an unusual cadence, others seem to be quite normal with emphasis in all of the right places. This made me wonder whether the unusual cadence in delivery was done purposely as an interpretive mechanism, perhaps visualizing the way the characters might actually speak in that time and place. While I guess I will never know unless the narrator or author decides to tell us, I decided to listen to the story as if that were case. Doing so made the unusual cadence much easier to listen to.

This story has so many places to go in sequels that I am certain I will buy the next one (I am hoping that there is a "next one"). I very much enjoyed the insight the author provides into the though process of the Koban inhabitants (for reasons that will become obvious in the story, I would not use the word "animals"). The relationship between the humans and the rippers just begs for a follow up.

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