Delight Reimers

A well thought out mil sci/fi

Reviewed: 03-04-24

A bit of Honor Harrington, a bit Rafferty Hawkins, a touch of Rico's Roughnecks. The characters, both good and bad, are fun with some clichés, but not overly predictable. The story takes some interesting twists while being a good ride and keeping the reader interested. If you like a good space opera a la David Weber, give this a go.

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Derp wars: the dance of the whiney women

Reviewed: 02-27-24

Alright, the story started out well enough with a decent concept. Alien invasion bombards the Earth with a low grade radiation attack that kills off 85-ish% of the world's population. Our hero is the Last Survivor of a dead age brought out of stasis hibernation by an advanced AI built from a hybrid of alien and human technology 180 years after he goes under in a secret government facility deep in the Nevada desert. He's a highly trained Marine with a heart of gold and the willingness to screw random teenagers who throw themselves at him and are willing to share him between six of them without any hesitation because female to male birth rates are so imbalanced that polygamy has become common practice. Jake (Mr. Hero) is armed by the AI with an entire military (not unit, not division, not battalion...an entire nation's military) worth of advanced technology...and the first group he interacts with are so grateful that he saved their womenfolk from raiders that they don't try to gank his gear. Uh huh. Suuuuure. Ok, I'll let it pass. He then takes the 6 women he rescued back to his underground bunker with the intent to train them in his advanced tech in the hopes of kick-starting a resurrection of the U.S.'s former glory and stability. It's here that all of the women and the AI gang up and tell the only dude that he's going to sleep with all of them and to get over it with the AI backing this logic by insisting that Jake needs to insure that command of the installation is secure since it can be passed to his children and arms all the women with pheromone perfume so that they can properly seduce him.

Fast forward a year, lots of unnecessary drama and female winging and Captain Janky has successfully knocked up 6 or 7 chicks, all of whome have started playing one-upmanship games for his attention, constantly harang and managed him, he's got multiple installations that need to be looked after, staffing issues to approve, aliens coming back for another round of "nuke the earthling", and he's getting no sleep because hes too busy playing Bunny hutch...and hes still managing to get everything done. The chicks are all conspiring behind his back, he's sleeping with his immediate second in command, all of a sudden he's got flying motorcycles, he's pulling surgical strike missions on compromised metropolitan areas full of raiders without any overwatch or backup...this just went full potato and I'm not even halfway through the second book. I tried! I really did!

Frankly, this whole thing is one giant example of "tell me you don't understand how something works without actually telling me you don't know how it works".

1. None of the women he's involved with are sleeping with each other, there's jealousy, competition and whining about neglect and all Jakers can do is feel bad: tell me you have no idea how polyamory works.

2. Taking your second in command into the field with you during a combat situation. Not having overwatch or clearing the area before leaving your spotter alone on top of a building. Hell, not even making sure the roof access door is secured! Total lack of situation awareness: tell me you've never studied military practices.

3. Flying "motorcycles" built around repulser units that can be more than a couple meters off the ground: tell me you don't actually understand physics.

4. A small, rural town allowing strangers access to advanced weapons and on security patrols: tell me you have no idea how hard scrabble survivalist tiny communities work.

5. Broken ribs and waking up sandwiched between two drunk women: tell me you've never broken a bone and don't understand how much that hurts or tried to sleep in the same bed with someone while you have broken bones. Or any serious injury, for that matter. Any time they move, you're going to feel it.

I wanted to like this...but I just...can't. I try really hard to finish a book once I start it, but this was just so bad that I couldn't force myself to keep going.

Move along. Find something else. Glenn Stewart's "Castle Federation" is a good start. Or John Ringo. He does a really good zombie apocalypse series that doesn't leave you rooting for the zombie to end humanity the way I'm rooting for the aliens in this series.

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1 person found this helpful

Well Done

Reviewed: 10-20-22

I consume a LOT of books, and so I get to experience a lot of stories, authors, readers, ect. It's rare when I can say that I loved everything about a series of audiobooks, so this is an anomaly. The author is obviously prior service (and if he's not, he's been around enough folks that he's absorbed the culture) from the language usage and slag and anyone who's worn a uniform will feel right at home with the characters. The scenarios are realistic even when you take into account that it's a future society and there are enough random references to "Old Earth" that anyone sufficiently educated will get the joke.

The reader did a very good job with the various nomenclature so the odd pronunciation fumbles won't throw you out of the story which is one of my BIGGEST complaints in regards to audiobooks. Combine that with keeping all the "voices" separated enough that you could tell whom was talking and you've got a narrator that I'll be looking for more often.

All in all, a very fun trilogy that I would recommend to any fan of mil sci-fi. The whole thing flowed smoothly, the characters are very believable, and it doesn't come off as pretentious or preachy. Far too often, mil sci-fi is written by people who have never been in the shit and have no idea what it's like and end up writing something out of a cheesy action movie. Steve Perry actually knows what he's writing and it shows.

10/10 will read again.

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Ignore the reader, the story is worth it!

Reviewed: 03-07-22

I absolutely love this series as it has all the fun aspects of a good story: adventure, realistic characters that you can become invested in, a believable enemy, and well thought out world's. The reader's insistence on over pronunciation is irksome and gets annoying at times, but it doesn't detract from the story enough that I can't enjoy it (but I'd be really happy if they'd let someone less irritating record a read through). All in all, worth the credits!

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Loved every second!

Reviewed: 04-11-19

From start to finish, I was roped in and I can't wait for the next!

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reader over enunciating.

Reviewed: 05-06-18

at first I thought the narrator had never read a book before, but after a bit I realised she was just over enunciating. a bit annoying in the long run

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2 people found this helpful

A couple of my favorite stories From Louis L'Amour

Reviewed: 10-08-17

Two stories of Lance Kilkenny, fast-paced and well read. The only problem is that the stories are presented backwards, with the first story for this set of characters read after the last story.

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