M. T. Dewe

Series would have worked better as a single book

Revisado: 03-01-25

This second book seems to mark the end of the story and that's totally fine. However, when combined with the rather abrupt way the first book finished, it makes me thing this was originally a single book that was split in two. I don't know if the split was for publishing reasons or wordcount or whatever, but this would have been much more effective as a single book, as each were a little short anyways.

When it comes to the story itself, I liked it. A little over-simplistic or under-developed perhaps, maybe aimed at a younger audience, but it was good overall. The narrators were fine, and I think they did a bit better job of matching cadence, so the switching of voices wasn't as jarring this time.
Overall a solid book with a nice, uplifting story.

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Great Story and Unbearable Narration

Revisado: 01-23-25

I read this book a while back and got the audiobook for a long car drive. I enjoyed the story greatly and wanted to revisit it.
Within the first few minutes I thought something was wrong. The narrator, who is the same through the whole series, has changed their style significantly. Dialogue is still given in various character's voices, but everything else is a strange half-whisper. I think it was an effort to more clearly distinguish dialogue from narration, but the implementation falls really flat. The half-whisper feels like a really bad attempt at a seductive voice that some males use and it gives the entire feel of the book a bad vibe.
I don't know if the author approved of this change or it was the publisher's choice or what, but this narration should not have been the final version.
Book was unlistenable and I couldn't finish it. I skipped around and the half-whisper problem persists through the epilogue.

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GenX Right Wing Chud Military Fantasy

Revisado: 07-29-24

The story can be summed up by this sentence. Old man wants to relive the glory days of his life instead of peacefully reflecting on both the good and bad he did and let the youth get on with shaping society in their own vision.

This book is written for people who think the 80's action movies like Lethal Weapon or Top Gun are documentaries. It was written by and for someone who's never served and has no idea how a large organization functions or how to be a part of one.

The sexism is obviously prominent. The first female introduced is the throwaway incompetent ex-wife who cheated, and through the whole book there's barely a sentence explaining why she might have cheated on a work-a-holic fighter pilot who brought his "command attitude" home. The main character certainly never considers how he could have been a part of the problem and fixates on the act of broken trust. Female #2 is described as an attractive alien babe, who is willing to subordinate and mold herself to the main characters needs and wants, instead of the relationship being a give and take of partnership. Female #3 is a black Jamaican pilot. It's mentioned she's unusually competent for a female and also the first descriptors of her are her physical appearance rather than her skills. She's also being maneuvered to start a thruple with the main character and the alien. Female #4 is a female pilot with not a single descriptor of her physical appearance because her role in the plot is just to be a typical example of how females don't measure up to males. She's described as hesitant, flightly, prone to panic during the various scenes she's in, also she doesn't curse like everyone else so isn't she cute and not as grown up.

American exceptionalism is also on display. The American way of doing war is the best way on the planet, and that follows down to the specific terminology the pilots use, precise military punctilio, military discipline (as seen in Hollywood movies) etc. There's no understanding of why the Americans do things a certain way, just that it is the American way, so its the best, this could be thought of as related to cargo cults.
And despite the alien forces recruited the best retired military pilots from around the world, they seem to have gotten predominantly American Chair Force pilots. No Ukrainians, Russians, Chinese, or anyone from Nato etc. There is a hidden self-burn in the book. Because it is explained the aliens seek pilots who are lonely, without close family ties or connections, so the fact they got only American veterans is possibly because everyone else lives out better endings to their lives. And the issue of language wouldn't be a problem because the aliens have translator pins that are supposed to turn everyone's speech into whatever vernacular the user speaks in, but that plot thread is dropped immediately after being brought up.

Then we get to problems with the editing of the story itself. There is some temporal confusion that should have been caught. The main character is described as retirement aged and having flown the F35 in combat, so this should be sometime in the future. But the main character's grandchildren watch Spongebob and that's how he learned about Squidward. Oops.
Then later on, main character comments on how his F35 only weighed X pounds and he's surprised the alien space fighter weighs Y pounds. That gives us a value for Y, and later we know they are taking an armored carrier of Z weight out to battle, but Z has at least 8Y on it and the values don't add up well. Sorry for using variables, but I refuse to go back and listen again to be more precise. My point is the author just threw numbers in to throw numbers to make it seem more legitimate and proper military sci-fi, and they did it badly.

The actual depictions of space fighter combat is pretty meh, and if you were interested in this book solely for that, this isn't going to deliver on what you want.

With regards to the narration, my only complaint is that the narrator has a poor Jamaican accent and instead construes it as Irish. Irish accents are closely related to Jamaican, but distinctly different. I think instead of making a bad attempt something else could have been done. But overall the narration is good.

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Cliffhanger so sharp it will cut your soul

Revisado: 05-22-24

Well, there's a sharp cliffhanger, but book 2 has already been announced and is available for preorder.

Other than that, this story rhymes with the Pillars of Reality series the author previously wrote. It is definitely not the same story in a different setting, but there are elements/themes that rhyme. If you liked Lost Fleet or Pillars of Reality you should enjoy this too.

Dual narration is fine, but I think the two narrators could have tried a little more to match cadence. It felt like they speak at different speeds and it is noticeable every time they handed off (which isn't too often, each chapter is written from a single viewpoint).

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Sexual Assault Is NOT Okay

Revisado: 05-01-24

Sexual assault is not okay if the person being assaulted receives physical pleasure during the act.
Sexual assault is not okay if the person being assaulted changes their mind later.
Sexual assault is not okay if the person being assaulted derives material gain from the act.
Sexual assault is not okay if the person being assaulted "asked for it" due to being in an altered state of mind.
Sexual assault is not okay if the appearance of the person being assaulted "asked for it".
Sexual assault is not okay if multiple others agrees that the assault should take place.

Bottom line. Sexual assault is wrong, bad, not okay. And the way that this book condones it is disgusting. It's 2024, not 1924.

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The Plot Thickens

Revisado: 08-17-22

Each subsequent book in this series has greater depth and immersion. I love how this started out as a somewhat whimsical adventure and has turned into something deserving the title of "Dark Empathy".
Also, we miss you and want to hear more from you Leftenant.

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Relentlessly Sexist

Revisado: 08-16-22

I understand power fantasy and wish fulfillment in fantasy. But literally every female around the main character is inferior and in need of protection and fragile and just plain lesser. The only exceptions are the ones the MC is uninterested in sexually.
Even in a world of magic and power based on more than the size of a person's muscles, women can't be equal. The romantic lead gets access to the same level of overpowered ability the MC has, but she's too weak physically AND mentally to handle the power withoit MC there to insert his super special magical power into her to take away the pain and stress.
The worst part is that I don't even think this was on purpose. Unlike the numerous and unproductive inner dialogues on pedophilia, which were a whole other thing. The author just seems to be so foundationally biased that they never consider whether female characters would even have their own goals or thoughts about things other than the protagonist or the ability to defend themselves with the magic they are skilled in.

Narrator is good though!

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Overhyped and underdelivered

Revisado: 10-16-21

This honestly is probably a 4 star book, but the blurb hyped it up so much that I felt actual resentment towards the book when it didn't even approach what was promised.
I've never read Eragon, and now I probably never will, because judging from this work, it's popular but not necessarily good.

To sleep in a sea of stars feels like it was written by a corporate committee trying to cash in on the latest trend. Lots of trendy technobabble that has little effect on the worldbuilding and story? Check. Themes borrowed from a popular alien horror game from a few years back? Check. Lots of telling and not showing? Check.

Honestly, I'm wondering at the relationship between the author and whoever the editor was at Torr. Because this book shouldn't have been released in this state. At the beginning of the first arc, the main character is dreading saying goodbye to her partner, and then at the end of (what should have been) the last chapter in the arc, she says goodbye, but in a completely different and extremely poignant way. I was legitimately impressed by that first arc, and then immediately shocked when it continued for one more extraneous and padded chapter. It wasnt an interlude showing a vignette of some other character in the world doing something seemingly unrelated that offered a glimpse of the world at large, it wasn't a past memory or anything; there was an entire chapter at the end of the first arc that was mostly filler, and then part two began. Oh, and right near the beginning of arc two, we are told of and not shown a group of "mysterious magic-adjacent" people who woule obviously be important later on in the arc. The foreshadowing was so blatant and obvious that it almost would have been better to just deus ex machina them in later in the arc.

The narration is fine, but nothing to flip your boots about. I was glad that the narrator actually uses a decent pace and I don't have to turn the speed up to 1.4x or 1.7x to listen to the story without interminable pauses between each phrase or sentence. The range of distinct voices is a somewhat limited, and it seems like every accent they attempt comes out as an American badly failing to imitate a Spanish accent, but the narration was crisp and clear otherwise.

I wanted to like this book, and it seemed that I would based on the overhyped description. That's really the biggest mark against this book. It would be perfectly acceptable and moderately enjoyable if it wasn't touted to be some sort of sublime seminal masterpiece

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Excellent continuation of the story

Revisado: 04-02-21

Love this series. It's not Super Powereds but that completely fine by me. The one thing that let this audio version down was the strange lilting cadence by the narrator. She also didn't seem to go back to the first book and relisten because some of the character voices (like Fornax) changed significantly. Her performance in the first book was markedly better

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Boring, excessively wordy, poorly edited

Revisado: 11-29-20

Despite being a book about honor Harrington, we barely spend any time with the protagonist. The plot doesn't really move forward very far, in fact, most of the book is spent setting up the "final showdown" for the next book.
In addition, the phrase "more in sorrow than in anger" gets used a few dozen times and I can't believe the editing staff didn't catch that repetitive phrasing and word choice.
I could barely stay awake during this book, and as always, I had to speed up to x1.8 speed to make this narrator bearable.

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