But of a mix

Great narrator. Compelling story but poorly executed. This was the author’s first book and it was self published. The story kept me listening but the writing really needed another edit and was overly verbose. There were technical errors that could have been corrected with a minimum of research, that, for some reason, bothered me.

I’m not sure if I want to pursue the rest of the series. I liked the story idea and would like to see it to its conclusion but if the writing is the same it’d be an endurance trial, not a pleasure.

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4 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

very enjoyable

As always RC Bray is amazing, and makes the story come to life. the plot is amazing and the characters are vivid.

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2 les gens ont trouvé cela utile

You must listen to this one…

I literally listen to 5 books a month, seeking something that approximates the Expeditionary Force or something from Brandon Sanderson. This absolutely exceeded my expectations! Must read!!!

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1 personne a trouvé cela utile

One of the Best SciFi's out there

Love this book. Characters had depth and consistency they well very well fleshed out. The plot was griping and very unique very robust as well. This books touched upon almost all dimensions of action; Space, Ground, Air. Consistency is what made the book great as all the protagonists and antagonists were consistent in their behavior and thought which is a breath of fresh air as most SciFi in general have almost double personalities which veer between logic behavior and illogical behavior. RC Bray again delivers a consistent superb performance. I cannot think of anything bad to say about this book and I look forward to the other parts of the series.

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1 personne a trouvé cela utile

Good Story, took a little while to get interesting

Not a bad start to what seems to be an interesting series, it started out slow for me but got interesting enough for me to write this review and buy the next book in the series. Im going to be lazy here and not state any other reasons why I like this book except for the reason I have stated, give it a go, im sure you will like it.

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R.C.Bray i want my babies to have your voice

RC Bray your voice is amazing . I am in love with your vice I want my babies to have your voice

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1 personne a trouvé cela utile

"Hard" Sci-Fi May Be a Stretch

**I don't generally write detailed reviews like this, but I think I can speak confidently enough about the subject matter at hand that I can warrant being a tad opinionated in this case.** Okay, here goes...

Ok, so first of all, I loved the concept! It is very reminiscent of 'Terra Invicta', an also somewhat Hard Sci-Fi strategy game available on Steam and a couple of other platforms I believe.

With the addition of "Subspace" technology to the arsenal of the Alien threat in this book, and the almost literal Deus Ex Machina of an enemy android agent meticulously transferring technology to the Resistance, "Hard Sci-Fi" may be a bit of a stretch with this series, but I still found it entertaining and engaging, without going too far into Clarke-tech.

My one serious beef with this series is one towards the author I'm afraid. Just from being an active fan of this genre of books and video games, certain details stick out to me as immersion-breaking, and if I'm being entirely honest, more than a little annoying. This book spends a lot of time dealing with both tactical and strategic military activities, on land, in the air, and at sea; as well as some pretty great espionage scenes. I can definitely feel the Tom Clancy inspiration here, and there are many places in the story where this is pulled off very well! There are a number of excellent descriptions of combat, and other kinds of engagements, it is clear that the author likes to make these activities pivotal to the story; *however* the amount of times that these pivotal moments revolve around details about weapon performance, or the way that fire teams operate, etc., etc., that are just plain wrong, is hard to ignore. The author clearly is interested in realism, and gives details about weapons being used in the engagements, such as calibre and cyclic rate, but then the detail that either allows that weapon's attack to succeed or fail seems to be something that the author either didn't look into; or decided to hyperbolize, ignore, or fictionalize. The word "hypersonic", for example, is used several times to to describe the velocity of shells fired from the 20mm Vulcan cannon on an F-16. The word 'hypersonic' has a real definition, and the velocity of those shells doesn't even approach it. This is knowable through a 30 sec Google search.


**MAJOR SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT**



There are two things that I cannot ignore. They were pivotal, and really pissed me off.

#1. When the SEAL team engages Lana outside the sub pens:

The Admiral who ordered the interdiction knew about her capabilities to a degree that no one else outside the Resistance could hope for. The fact that the author described a set of SEAL teams hand-picked by an admiral setting up a force-excession ambush, where the Admiral in question had verified details of the defensive and offensive capabilities of the target, and access to absolutely any armaments that the navy could provide for such an engagement, made certain details of the engagement described in the scene completely ludicrous.

The point contact SEAL Team that is meant to be in the target's face as soon as they open the door is basically described as standing and/or lying down on the ground completely in the open, with M249 LMGs described as being "mounted on tripods" and no mention of any kind of barricades or sandbags or cover of any kind for the machine gun emplacements set up to engage this clearly extremely hard target. I can't imagine that any SEAL Team squad leader worth his salt would not have replaced those M249s with M2 .50s, place *those* on tripods behind very quickly placed concrete traffic barricades, along with some SEALs operating AT4 rockets and Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle tubes, with extensive armour-piercing capabilities. Repeat hits from molten copper EFPs would stretch the capacity of even superconductive armour. The personnel carrying carbines would most certainly have been armed with the M249s instead, and would *also* have been firmly in cover behind solid barriers. Also, NOBODY is mentioned as using armor piercing ammunition? I'm really only a long time military tactics and strategy enthusiast, Im no genius, I'm no general, I'm not even a veteran, but even I know how wrong and weird that engagement was.

The author could have *still* had the villain get away, the end of the scene could have still ended up exactly the same, but my immersion wouldn't have been broken by these glaringly obvious oversights.

#2. The climax in the B2:

The author carefully describes that the B2 used for the mission was A.) Expecting to evade many flights of opposition aircraft attacks. B.) Carrying many countermeasures against enemy aircraft attacks, including ECM, jammers, traditional countermeasures such as chaff and flares, even short-range defensive missiles described by the author as being able to track not only an incoming fighter, but also potentially an incoming missile.

At the climax of the book, a B2 Spirit is brought down by a single heat-seeker, launched directly up the tailpipe by a single Rafale fighter, running on a single turbine with a severely damaged left side on the entire aircraft! Coming right up directly from behind... the place where all anti- air countermeasures are designed to work best. I actually laughed out loud!

Countermeasures?? What countermeasures?

Never mind that an entirely stock B2-Block 30 is *literally* designed to avoid the exact attack that brings it down so easily. I found this out with another 30 sec google search.

Source says:

"The B2 is probably the best in this regard thanks to its large size compared to a fighter.

it has its engine buried deep in the airframe, with an s curve in front and behind. This means a direct look at the engine isn’t possible, so no heat signature from it. Other techniques are likely used to stop the engine from heating up the airframe around it.

The exhaust heat signature is greatly reduced aswell since the hottest parts can’t be seen due to the engine being buried in the aircraft.

The exhaust from the engines are mixed with ambient air before it exits the airframe. This significantly lowers the temperature of the exhaust. The exhaust is released from the top of the aircraft such that the exhaust isn’t visible from below the aircraft.

So the engines are going to have a very small heat signature."

Heck, the book describes the pilots of the B2 scrambling to eject before they are ever even hit a single time. Somehow knowing that this single tiny missile that is meant to be super agile and cripple a fighter is going to go completely up their tailpipe and take down their absolutely gigantic high altitude strategic bomber with a single hit, blowing up like the Death Star. Never mind that, again, this aircraft is specifically designed to survive that exact scenario, even if it *did* have one engine completely destroyed by the enemy. And even *if* it hadn't been further modified to be even more survivable for the specific mission parameters as described by the author. Again, you could have just written your way around the real facts! Describe how the Rafale had loaded big bomber-buster missiles or something. Better yet, describe how the desperate Android pilot used his half-done Rafale, now almost totally ballistic after being hit by one of the Spirit's defensive missiles, targeting it's remaining kinetic energy to ram the bomber, taking it down in a scene that would leave Michael Bay secluded in his bunk for the remainder of the novel!

You could have wowed us with a really cool depiction of the enormous size difference between the two aircraft, describing how the disintegrating airframe of the shattered Rafale punched through the wing of the bomber in the way that most people probably picture that a missile would, if they didn't know that the B2 Spirit has a wingspan of over 52 metres!! (172 ft.) Literally wider than a sixteen story apartment building laid on its side! Now picture even a top-of the line IR-seeking missile, with a warhead about the size of a hand grenade, taking down that aircraft in a single shot hitting pretty much anywhere outside a direct hit to the windscreen.

This series, ad well as the author who has written it, have SO much potential! I really did enjoy it, this is simply constructive criticism! Just do a bit more research about your topics and I think that you will find even more success!

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Hard to listen

Not worth the credit I suffered through it hoping it got better but didn't

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An excellent story.

R.C. Bray could read the phone book to me and I would be enthralled. It's an alien invasion and it's somewhat realistic. Looking forward to my next credit so I can get book 2.

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Great Start

As always the voice of RC is amazing. The story is very good and I definitely enjoyed the author's approach of a slow build of character development and story progression. I can't wait to get to the second book.

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