The story is a great jumping off point for part 2.

Entertaining enough that I found myself thinking “what’s next” when not listening. That is a good listen in my book.

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Scott killed it like always

I’m not a huge Sci-Fi guy but every book Scott writes is great. Always captivating always catches my attention. Can’t wait for more. Excited to see where this series goes. Only problem I had was the voice actors pronunciation of Aegis. But that’s just because I’m a Greek nerd. 5/5

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12 people found this helpful

Great Book

Must have from Audible! Action pack mind blowing. Good story don’t worry about the bad reviews this is a good Audible book. Enjoy.

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1 person found this helpful

Great

Great story, Great author. It is absolutely worth the purchase and read. It has adventure, humor, drama, all that you want in a book. You wont be disappointed.

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Original and Engaging Plot... Not Bad!

While this is far from my favorite Science Fiction Audiobook, I must recognize that I fully enjoyed it. I recommend it.

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Good story.

I purchased this book because I like alien themed stories. I was not disappointed overall story and narration is good. I hope there’s more to this and it becomes a series.

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Unexpected

Mother Ship surprised me. I was expecting an "Independence Day' type experience, but this isn't your typical alien invasion and much of it plays out much more like a zombie-esque/ survival story with a healthy dose of conspiracy thrown in. Solid cast of characters, though at times I found the best friend insanely irritating (which I think is exactly how we are meant to feel about him). Solid, well-paced story, that kept me engaged from start to finish. Scott Aiello does a great job with the narration. I was given a free review copy of this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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10 people found this helpful

Great Adventure - Awesome narration!

I have recently been delving deeply into the Ixan and other universes of Scott Bartlett, and those are very serious, very deep and very engrossing books. So while Mother Ship is certainly in the military SF genre, it is a very different kind of book than the world of Keyes, Vin Husher and the Super-carrier Vesta, not to mention the Ixans themselves. Another factor for me was that this book was narrated by Scott Aiello, as compared to Mark Boyett whom I am used to now from all of Scott's other books I have listened to so far.

Listening Experience: A lot of the value of an audio book for me is the experience and the quality of the narration itself. Scott Bartlett is very well known for his attention to detail, and he makes great choices when it comes to narrators. This book was no exception; Scott Aiello did a super job characterizing the various voices and personalities of the characters. There was both huge tension and humor and awkwardness and many other emotions represented by Scott. So it was overall a very captivating and high quality listening experience for me. I was really engaged and constantly looking forward to what would happen next.

Many of the events of the book capture older style conspiracy theories about aliens, comically demonstrated by main character Max’s best high school friend and sidekick Jimmy. Complicating things is that Jimmy is a stoner; he likes to get high on pot quite a bit. As it turns out, he is actually right about a lot of these theories.

Max Edwards is an orphan, raised by Cynthia and Peter Edwards, loving parents. But all is not as it seems with the Edwards – neither the parents nor Max. Soon after a traumatic afternoon at Jimmy’s nearby ranch where a horse is critically injured – the saucers arrive. People start turning into zombies. Killer zombies.

The accelerator is slammed to the floor for the pace of the book at this point, and it never lets up. As Max slowly, then with ever quickening speed learns about himself, his parents, and the world around him, the context is a desperate struggle to survive – and to save all of humanity.

Ancillary characters like Ted Chambers, principal at Max’s school who turns out to be a lot more than a principal, Survivalist Benson, who creates Fort Benson and saves our heroes, and Max’s new found love interest – his first – who is the beautiful daughter of Benson, Tara, spice up the book. Even the characterizations of the horses and their personalities and traits are clearly drawn from life and life experience. The Evil woman Janet Thompson displays all the expected characteristics of a true psychopath with a dash of megalomania, adding realism and dark twists to the book as well.

All in all, a great read and listen. Possibly more enjoyable for a younger audience, but I’m middle-aged, and I enjoyed it immensely.

One of my favorite parts is that the characters all have minds of their own, and they rarely if ever do what you want them to do – or possibly what is actually sensible to do in favor for what is the “right thing” to do. This is truly a Scott Bartlett hallmark.
Let’s look under the hood: Scott Aiello does a great job with the narration. Playing everything from a stoner high school kid to a serious military operative to a psychopath to a teen aged highly intelligent beautiful girl is not easy. You try it. But Aiello pulls it off and STILL keeps you completely immersed in the story and fully engaged and believing. This audio book is the intersection between fabulous narration and masterful writing.

There are areas where you are going to have to suspend some belief. However, one of the most important things to me in the flow of a book is that the “stage management” and the stage crew not show through and disrupt the flow of the read/listen. If Bartlett had to put in every detail of how and why things worked, or why people made the choices they made the book would be a thousand pages longer. No can do. So to me, while I did have to put some beliefs in park, the story line held true and flow was very good. Scott really managed to get at some much deeper issues in this book, and it’s not easy to do given the tongue in cheek nature of some of the scenes.

The bottom Line: I really enjoyed Mother Ship from stem to stern. I loved trying to figure out what was up with Max, Jimmy, Tara, the aliens, Ted, The Edwards parents, Ethan, everyone had their part. Surviving against all odds is not an easy thing. Once again, the paradigm of the mythic hero prevails, though in a unique perspective from the mind of Bartlett and the narration of Aiello.

My litmus test for a good read/listen has 3 parts: Did I enjoy it and would I listen to more? Would I buy the next book in the series or another from this author / narrator? Would I recommend this book to others? My answers to all 3 of these questions is definitively yes. I have already purchased more from Mr. Bartlett, I would be glad to listen to more narration from Mr. Aiello. I absolutely enjoyed this book through rare drives during Pandemic lock-down and long daily hikes in the Tennessee hills. As for recommending it, I would certainly recommend it to any fan of the genre; be it zombies, apocalypse, aliens, UFOs, military SF – there’s a lot going on here. And some of it hits very, very close to real life right about now. So definitely this is time and money well spent, and will leave you wanting more Scott Bartlett.

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Kept my interest!!!!

I really enjoyed this story!! It was well written and a wonderful performance!! I highly recommend this book!!! Can’t wait for the next book!!!!

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Exciting scifi Story

Another well written story by Mr Bartlett. Have not been able to put it down .

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7 people found this helpful