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  • Judgment of Mars

  • Starship's Mage, Book 5
  • Written by: Glynn Stewart
  • Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer
  • Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (21 ratings)

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Judgment of Mars

Written by: Glynn Stewart
Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer
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Publisher's Summary

The destruction of the secret archive of the Royal Order of Keepers on Mars has left Damien Montgomery, Hand of the Mage-King, with his enemies defeated, his lover dead - and his questions unanswered.

When he seeks out the remaining Keepers for answers, he discovers only violence and death in their strongholds. Someone else is hunting down the survivors to make sure they never answer Damien's questions - or anyone else's.

As a wave of murder sweeps Mars and the consequences of the Keepers' conspiracy sink home, Damien is summoned before the Council of the Protectorate to answer for the deaths of two other Hands. In the political heart of the Protectorate of Mars, he finds he may be forced to choose between honoring the oaths he swore and preserving the survival of the Protectorate itself.

©2017 Glynn Stewart (P)2017 Tantor

What listeners say about Judgment of Mars

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Placeholder? Yes..but a Good One

This book continues the story arc from 'Alien Arcana' (the previous entry), but doesn't resolve it. More is obviously to come. Glynn Stewart has the balls to introduce a mysterious all-powerful cabal known as "The Keepers of the Secret" - and then doesn’t reveal what the "Secret" is two novels later (and counting..). He has the courage to introduce some tension.. making his overpowered main character - Damien Montgomery - fallible and vulnerable in this novel.. but does so with a wink and a nod (by introducing an omniscient villain). One can't help but feel the underlying goal is to justify more sellable novels.
That said, this book is well-crafted: Stewart builds his military/political galactic power structure and goes deeper into the history of his magic system, but maintains techno-thriller aspects to satisfy his more geeky fans and incorporates enough entertaining action sequences to keep the pace going.

Jeffrey Kafer is once again nothing special as a reader.. falling back into a disinterested monotone with laughable volume modulation patterns, but does a "fair" job (other than an annoyingly plodding pace - I recommend a 1.25X playback rate).

In toto, this book cheats fans a little while still advancing the 'Space Opera' mandate and providing genuine entertainment. It rates 7.5/10.
If you have never listened to Glynn Stewart before, you've in for a treat.. 'Judgement Of Mars' is a good example of his writing chops.. but I definitely recommend starting with books earlier in the series.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Disappointing(spoilers... Kinda)

Someone else's review mentions it, but a near omniscient enemy that manages to always be ahead is pointlessly dreary. Unsolvable incidents of stupid in otherwise intelligent characters is frustrating at best. And the grand finale with evidence of war crimes, mass murder/terrorism, and treason, no no its fine, go ahead no repercussions. It just really undermines the whole justice and strength bits of the protectorate. Seriously, no need to play nice, they're responsible for a million dead or more...

Also, it seems this story has been continued, but this book seems to have been written at lesser quality in terms of plot, development, and characters to intentionally force gaps to allow follow up story lines. To me this brings the follow up content into question. If you have to force holes to fit continuations, are they actually going to reach acceptable quality.

The performance as usual was quite good, though let down by the content somewhat. And for all my complaints there are certainly good points about the book. However compared to the others books the failings in this one were extremely upfront and were clearly used to put things off for the sake of delaying and lengthening the story. It was seriously hampered by repeatedly using the same encounters over and over again instead of varying interactions. This made the book feel.... Boring and repetitive whenever you hit the sequence of interactions.

Sorry for the vagueness/spoilerness.. It needs some reference to events in the book to communicate my complaints, but I don't want to ruin things for people who choose to read/listen to the book.

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