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  • Black Ocean: Mercy for Hire

  • Complete Collection: Missions 1-16
  • Written by: J.S. Morin
  • Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
  • Length: 92 hrs and 43 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (90 ratings)

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Black Ocean: Mercy for Hire

Written by: J.S. Morin
Narrated by: Mikael Naramore
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Publisher's Summary

The galaxy’s worst bounty hunter just might be its most relentless hero.

Esper Richelieu is a wizard with a mission: To make the galaxy a better place one lost soul at a time.

Donning the trappings of an interstellar bounty hunter, she delves into the galaxy’s underworld to search out those most in need of help. Whether it’s a teenage runaway or an actor kidnapped by cultists, the victim comes first.

Money is an afterthought. That confuses a lot of clients.

But sometimes the best way to get someone to accept the help they need is to convince them to pay for it. Other times, clients unwittingly fund their own reparations by hiring the last person who’d want to aid them in continuing their wicked ends.

But are pure intentions enough against the vilest forces in the galaxy?

©2019 J.S. Morin (P)2020 J.S. Morin

What listeners say about Black Ocean: Mercy for Hire

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adolescent

The writing is simplistic and often almost immature. But, to paraphrase the best character in the book, at least there is lots! for one credit, it gave me many hours of distraction during dog walks even if it streched my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point.

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Great Series

Great series. I enjoyed the continuation of the Black Ocean world and characters.

The only negative was I did not enjoy the 'dark' section of the story and found that it dragged on too long.

Even given that, it was well worth the time and very enjoyable.

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really enjoyed it

Great story Great narration by the story teller for being to pull off more than a dozen voices

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More please!

Wonderful as usual from JS Morin, Mikael Naramore and the black ocean universe. Only wish there was more

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Very nice magician stories.

I really like the Galaxy outlaw series. When I saw this book series of Esper venturing out into her own. I kinda got a little excited and had high hopes. However though, It's not the same Esper as in the previous series. The author gave the lead character a huge "goody two shoes" morality boost. Although majority of the book is Esper being a goody goody two-shoe, the author does explore other avenues about her potential character flaws. So in general the book has its ups and downs and some sections just drags on for like ever, but overall I did enjoy it. Wesley Wesley and Kubo are my favorite. Potty mouth Tiffany not so much.
Mikael Naramore does an excellent job of reading the book, and if it wasn't for him I would probably given the overall book score one less star.

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  • Sam
  • 2021-09-15

one of my favourite series

Love the concept, wizards in space are great fun.

Can't recommend this series and it's predecessor, the Mobius series enough.



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Scooby Doo Mysteries for Adults

I listen to many different genres. Historical to post apocalyptic. To get away from the serious, these books do just that.
Fun, entertaining, full of action and humor. These made me laugh out loud, a lot.
Around the 3rd or 4th mission I was struck with the thought that these reminded me of Scooby Doo when I was a kid. These are not childish, don't get me wrong. The characters, the good guys prevail, the lack of seriousness is what matters. The language, sexual connotations and the "mysteries" are anything but child friendly.
I thought after 90 plus hours, I'd be happy to move along to something else. I was wrong. I love the lightheartedness of these books.

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the prologue is at the end

great addition to the Blalck Ocean series. skip to the final chapter, it's mission 0.5 the prologue

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This is the first book of his I've listened too

This is the first book of his I've listened too and I got hooked off yhe start I loved it !!!

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So good!

I wasn't sure how this was going to go but was pleasantly surprised on the character arcs. There were plenty of unpredictable events that made it all that more enjoyable. Keep up the good work J.S. you got a fan.

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  • M.P.I.
  • 2020-10-28

best bang for your sci-fi buck...period

edited! finally just finished this 92+ epic black Ocean romp! it held up pretty well as I re-listened to the first 8 books when I got this 16.5+ mission sweeping adventure of Espyr the "do gooder"! wanted to wrap with 2 final thoughts...
1) it ended kind of weirdly imho...almost a little anticlimactic...which was a mild disappointment. it wasn't a full leave you hanging but it was just sort of...over all of a sudden. but it did have 3 short missions afterwards which sort of helped "finish" the adventures...somewhat. kind of. I guess?
2) to this end, the very last short story was actually mission 0.5...it should have been at the very beginning! not at the very end. various short missions interspersed in between major missions. but there were only 2 or 3 thru the entire 16 missions...which made 3 of them at the end kind of surprising. but really should have only been 2 (maybe even just 1 but could live with 2...no spoilers from me tho!). mission 0.5 should have been before mission 1 however. it would have immediately given those of us who had purchased individual missions or even the 4packs something brand new on this epic 16.5 mega mission jaunt! start off with a little back story of mission 0.5! it definitely linked the adventures of Espyr on the Mobius from the original series to her new adventures in this series!

so. if you're reading this and want a suggestion...go to the very last mission of this entire 92 hour menagerie and start with mission 0.5! then go back to mission 1 and listen sequentially :) you're welcome!

original review (written before finishing the set!):

if you're reading this and are curious, stop right now and go get JS Morin's Galaxy Outlaws Black Ocean 16.5 books for 1 measley little credit! that is, if you haven't listened to that yet! that sets the stage for this spin-off of Morin's original epic magic-scifi masterpiece! if you love sci-fi and especially if you love magic, honestly intertwined in a way I never thought of before hearing this series, you will likely agree its the best credit you'll ever spend! over 80 hours for 1 credit?! over 16 epic books (kind of like long chapters as part of the overall storyline)...Morin's imagination is one of the best I've ever heard.

1 caveat...there is quite a bit of language (not kid friendly...though he has an earlier series thats more so magic mixed with a little sci-fi vs. this series thats mostly sci-fi but a healthy dose of magic). to me I had to dock 1 star for this...as his earlier series before the Black Ocean had barely any language and the story didn't suffer in any way from the lack of cursing.

and ho-boy...despite this spinoff being centered around the do-gooder and former "one church" princess Espyr...wow does this series pour on the language more than even the original Black Ocean Galaxy Outlaws. it detracts for me enough to have to point it out...it may not for you. but the storyline is still stellar and always edge of your seat as to what twist it will take next!

oh. and this series is over 90 hours! for 1 credit! if you dig Morin's stories at all you owe it to yourself to go get his all-in-one packages like this or the Galaxy Outlaws (and there is a 2nd spinoff called Astral Prime, kind of like his version of deepspace 9 that centers around another character from the Galaxy Outlaws books, Cedric the Brown). that one had more potential than this series imho, however I didn't like the turn it took towards the end of that series...i still rank the original as the best of the 3 but the spinoffs are very good too! there is a little crossover between this series and the other spinoff but not much (mainly the character Espyr...otherwise they're fairly separate...i dont like too much crossover like the Flash and Green Arrow do...I feel like i have to sink myself into too much investment in both...so thats the good side of not having too much crossover between the 2 spinoffs).

hopefully I've not spoiled anything bc I hate spoilers! but given a good idea of my drawback for this series and yet still highly recommend it (just not for the kiddos).

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  • David T.
  • 2021-03-17

With this much story...

Not for the feint of heart, this story is long and should definitely be attempted only after "Galaxy Outlaws" has been thoroughly enjoyed. If you didn't enjoy that one, just give up now. Here's my biggest gripe with "Mercy for Higher", I believe we are best at writing what we know. J.S. Morin is a straight dude. I really don't think he has any business writing about a lesbian woman as his main character. I mean, case in point, every woman Espyr is attracted to. In fact nearly every woman who is sexually available in this book is a big breasted, femme with beautiful features and perfect skin and always wearing something skin tight and eating chocolates and sipping champagne and silk is usually involved and on and on and on ad nauseum. Why couldn't Espyr find some masc. butch with a shaved head and tattoos that walks around in an unflattering A-shirt who only wants to protect her and intimidates the shit out of everyone on the ship?? He writes about women in a way only a straight man could. Its honestly exhausting after her first triste and gets into weird fetishization of lesbianism by about halfway through the book. If Espyr is (nearly) exclusively attracted to women, why is it she's only attracted to women who are stereotypically attractive to straight men? And sure, I get that there are plenty of femmes that are attracted to other femmes out there but seriously every, single, woman? My second issue is how he portrays "good" men and "bad" men. "Good" men are always the picture of honorable, would never abuse someone or betray someone's trust. They always have best intentions and are by and large, painfully static. Wesley Wesley, who I must say has some of the funniest dialog in the book, is a bad attempt at flipping the script on the macho meat-head. He had so many opportunities for his character to develop and yet somehow couldn't seem to break out of his mold. "Bad" men are always attracted to underage girls, they are the quintessential "goon", all muscle no brain or as in Don Rucker's case, all brain and all of it used for devious and conniving ends. There are no gay men in this story, good or bad and idea of being attracted to a man is relegated to a teenagers bumbling attempts or a wife's adoration for her husband (though nothing sexual, of course because the only sexual attraction in the book features the attraction to women and specifically to extremely feminine women). The problem with these characters is I don't believe in them. At least with Tiffany or even Melody (don't get me started on her daughter being named Harmony) I can believe in their stories or at least suspend my disbelief long enough to empathize with them. I feel very little for Don Rucker, his very young pregnant wife or the countless number of innocent bystanders and syndicate lackeys that are crushed between him and Espyr. My last critique of this novel is "Dark Espyr". Really the "do-gooder" and "dark Espyr"??? Did anyone edit or even re-read this book?! Surely, for a man who claims his aspiration in life is "to be clever and right at the same time" he really, really missed the mark there. I've gotta say there are so many other examples of lazy or sloppy writing and slipshod story arcs, I can't get into all of them but these felt especially egregious. If your still reading this review it means your attention span is adequate for this book and you should probably just buy it and listen. 93 hours is a lot of entertainment, even with the numerous disappointing aspects, there's plenty of intriguing content and a whole Black Ocean to sail into. Also it should definitely be noted that Mikael Naramore absolutely kills it! Such a great narrator!!

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  • s.hurley
  • 2020-09-20

extremely enjoyable. pleasantly suprised

I was very pleasantly surprised with him much I enjoyed this series. extremely fun. the characters were unique and the world building was interesting. especially liked the dynamic between magic and technology.

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  • KvolkSD
  • 2020-12-27

Some of its legitimately funny, but

Mary Sue Richilieu is basically omnipotent for 90% of the story so what's the point? The whole Black Ocean Universe exists around and solely for Esper.

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  • Nick
  • 2021-02-26

Boring

I knew what Esper was like from the Galaxy Outlaw series, but I was hoping she would get better. However, she just isn't the character for me. Just doesn't hold a candle to the original series

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  • Sean
  • 2020-11-12

Slow and ridiculous

I can't finish this. It moves slow and a large part of the character development and plot points hinge on the idea that the characters can just argue with the universe for things to happen. Ridiculous.

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  • Anonymous User
  • 2020-10-25

Love this galaxy (no spoilers)

This is a great continuation of The Black Ocean galaxy. I l enjoyed each new character introduced and relished the bits and pieces we see in the future of characters that were featured in the Black Ocean series. There were so many parts where I was completely thrown by the twists and developments of many of the missions. If you enjoyed the original Black Ocean stories, you will definitely enjoy this spin off of one of its main characters.

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  • M
  • 2020-10-03

Great series

Wonderful addition to Black Ocean. Gotta hope Morin will continue the story with some of the characters in another series. Loved the ending. Very Black Ocean. Always enjoy the extra stories too.

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  • 🔥 Phx17 🔥
  • 2022-03-04

Value space opera starring Wizard Barbie and dog

93 hrs of space wizards, megaladogs, and mafia-pirate turf wars? Heck ya! This collection features the exploits of Esper (or as I like to think of her: Wizard Barbie) and Kubu the sentient megaladog told through 16.5 missions (think of them like TV episodes). The first 3/4 of the book features stand alone missions as Esper collects an assorted Scooby gang of misfits including Tiffany the Teenage Wizard and Wesley Wesley the Maybe Secrent Agent. From Mission 12, there’s a multi-mission story arc that pulls in characters from the Galaxy Outlaw omnibus (also a 16.5 Mission collection). There are occasional F 💣, not at all graphic (comic level) violence, teenage level innuendo, and fade to black FF and MF couplings. These aren’t as campy as Space Team or as shiny as Firefly, but for popcorn fluff like you’re binging on Stargate or Star Trek episodes, this gives great bang for your buck.

Tips for those new to the Oceans Black universe:
The books are sold in mission 4-packs and then the four mission 4-packs are gathered into 16 mission omnibus collections. Why buy four “books” when you can get all 16 missions in one book?

1. Start with the 85hrs of Galaxy Outlaws and its 16.5 missions with the Mobius crew. There’s a better of assortment of characters and you’ll get introduced to Esper and Kubu, the MCs of this omnibus. There’s also less F 💣, teenage drama, or romance focus, leaving the space opera on center stage.

2. From there, you can pick from three collections set before/after Galaxy Outlaws
a. This omnibus containing another 16.5 missions (or the four “Mercy” mission packs)
b. Astral Prime omnibus, set about the same time as this Mercy omnibus, but focusing
on wizard Kelvin Black, aka Cedric the Brown, and space politics ala Deep Space Nine
(a little too much ruminating on the origins of life, but still a good value)
c. Mirth and Mayhem omnibus, set before all of these collections
and following the younger years of Wizard Mordecai the Brown.

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  • Dean Petersen
  • 2020-10-22

Excellent, It goes full circle.

It starts off a little slower than "GALAXY OUTLAWS" but hang in there. Once it starts moving, your in for a wild ride with all the original and new characters. I cannot wait till till J. S. comes out with the 3rd series, I think Tiffany will steal the show. I've never read or listened to any of his books but in the last 5 weeks, l have listened to over 170 hours and I'm hook, BiG Fan.
Thank you J. S. Morin, I'm grateful for the experience.

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