James

Finally Had Enough

Reviewed: 12-18-24

The first few full-length novels in this series were very good but it declined in quality and "jumped the shark" in Book 12. I tried Book 13 (Pursuit of the Bold) but gave up.

I have the same concerns as many other readers and, finally, they became too much to take. Just to get them off my chest here are some of my concerns.

1. The Tabitha Masters character. She is violent, ultra-competitive, aggressive, and very much focused on sex. She is like the warrior princess type that teenage boys are fascinated by, but I have never met a real woman remotely like her. I could just never find her believable as a character, and she got worse with each novel.

2. Violent aggressive women in general. The author seems hung up on violent aggressive women and we now have an entire humanoid species dominated by aggressive females.

3. The pace has become frenetic as the main characters go through a series of near-death adventures, surviving with only seconds or inches to spare. That pattern can be exciting but when it is overused the story just loses believability.

4. The author has re-used some plot devices too many times. For example, the main character's repeated experiences with septic systems have gotten tiresome and are no longer funny. Similarly, it seems like in every novel the main characters get a new or fixed up spaceship but go into debt in the process, then get their ship (or ships) nearly destroyed again and are constantly on the edge of bankruptcy.

5. The series has its good points and it is question of whether the bad points outweigh the good. For me, that happened in books 12 and 13.

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Excellent Start to This Series

Reviewed: 11-22-24

Nice mix of action and character development. Likeable main characters. Fairly light but a good plot. Very much enjoyed it.

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They Fooled Me Once

Reviewed: 11-22-24

The title seems appropriate because they fooled me. I bought the book before I realized it was less than 3 hours long. Very poor value for a credit. And I did not like the story. The main character was a minor character from the first novel. The primary source of dramatic tension was her making stupid decisions. Among other things I got tired of her repeated attempts to sacrifice herself for others.

I enjoyed the first book in the series a lot and was looking forward to having a long series ahead of me. Now I am not so sure.

I will give the next one a try as it is a reasonable length and it returns to the main character from the first novel.

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Virtual Voice is Not Ready for Prime Time

Reviewed: 06-18-24

The AI voice is better than I expected but not nearly as good as a skilled human reader. One flaw was frequently putting emphasis on the wrong word in a sentence or letter in an acronym. In TB, ICU, and other acronyms the AI emphasized the first letter instead of the last. And the AI read the acronym OD (for overdose) as the word "odd". Also, the voice was very childish, even though the content was suitable for an older audience.

As for the story, the two main characters are supposed to be intellectually gifted young women (doctors working as residents in a major university hospital and candidates for faculty positions) but their decision-making, conversation, and behavior was more like that of maybe average 15-year-olds.

There were also a few logical flaws and unlikely coincidences in the plot.

But the overall setting is interesting, the characters quite appealing, and the book started to get better toward the end. I am considering getting the next one.

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Not bad, but below the author's usual standard.

Reviewed: 06-05-24

Jack Campbell is probably my favorite sci-fi author. His Lost Fleet series is most enjoyable series I have read or listened to. This book was ok but below his usual standard.

One complaint I have is the ending--which is a total cliff-hanger. I really dislike cliffhanger endings and avoid them if I can -- or at least wait until the follow-up is available.

Also, the dual narration did not work for me. And I did not really see the point as both narrators did male and female characters. The woman narrator seemed like she was doing a children's story while the male narrator seemed to be reading for an adult audience. I guess the book itself would qualify as "Young Adult". In any case, the two narrators did not mesh and every time they changed over, I found it jarring.

The publisher's description says that Earth Guard wants to dispose of the main character (Selene). The question is why. The motivation was not convincing. She keeps doing good things, so why are so many people trying to kill her? Maybe there will be a better explanation in the second book.

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4 people found this helpful

Annoying Main Characters

Reviewed: 03-16-23

The main character (Dan) is a jerk. It is hard to root for him. The female lead is completely implausible and her relationship with Dan just had me shaking my head. I cringed every time they were in the same scene.

Also, a lot of the plot dynamics are based on the good guys being very slow in understanding what is going on. The bad guy is always several steps ahead until the very end.

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Hated the ending

Reviewed: 03-11-23

Pretty good series until the final book. Very disappointing ending that was both unsatisfying and illogical.

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Similar to Destiny's Crucible and that's great.

Reviewed: 02-11-23

The main character gets transported to a more primitive world and tries to move it forward. This has become a significant sub-genre in sci-fi and is something I very much like. Possibly my favourite sci-fi series of all time (Destiny's Crucible) is like this. The Sword of Jupiter (SOJ) is similar and is very, very good. I like the characters and the plot development.

This sub-genre usually has a strong military theme, as is true of SOJ.

The Safehold series by David Weber is similar and starts out great for the first few novels then goes off the rails. Destroyer and the Lost Regiment series are ok but not great.

If you like this sub-genre, try The Sword of Jupiter Hope the third book in the series appears in Audible soon.

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3 people found this helpful

Some Flaws

Reviewed: 06-19-22

The reader (Mark Boyett) is excellent. But the story has three major flaws that are always red flags for me.

1. Main Character: The main character is unappealing. His interactions with other characters are mostly negative. Basically he is a jerk. (That wasn't the first word that came to mind.) Despite the fact that his strongest motivation is to protect his daughter, he seems to have almost no consideration for the feelings or views of others, including his daughter. I often found myself rooting for his various enemies or antagonists. .

2. Set-up. The basic set-up seems illogical to me. There is a real world and a virtual or digital world (subverse) that is essentially a computer simulation. Characters can go back and forth between the real world and the virtual world or can exist in both simultaneously. This is a pretty familiar for anyone who has dipped into the LITRPG sub-genre. But it is important for the rules of the virtual world to be clear and to be logically consistent. In this case after about 10 hours of listening the structure of the digital world had not been adequately explained and what explanation there was seemed to have inconsistencies.

3. Plot Arc. The plot arc consisted of the main character going around getting into fights or battles, often unnecessarily and without contributing much to the overall storyline.

I wanted to like this series but I had to give up on it.

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Interesting science but slow plot development

Reviewed: 05-08-22

The best part of the book was “hard science”. It starts with the current understanding of communications technology and gravitation and provides interesting extrapolations. I also kind of liked the change of pace provided by socially conservative characters. No sex. No swearing. Two of the central characters get engaged but stay in separate hotel rooms!

The weakness was the very slow plot development. The other weakness was that the characters did not really capture my interest. They were ok but their personal issues never came alive for me.

Overall it was moderately entertaining and might be good for people who like hard science fiction.

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