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| Book Cover via Amazon.com |
Opinion
Kevin Steverson did not contact me about this book, but the narrator for his audiobook did, Mister KC Johnston. KC was very enthusiastic when he told me about this amazing book he’d worked on and asked if I’d listen to it. So I got to thinking, sure I could just review the audiobook narration, but why stop there? I’m a book reviewer, after all, Yesterday was my review of the narration, but today my friends come to the review of the book itself.
That’s right, I have not only listened to it, but I also went and downloaded it from Kindle Unlimited and read it. I’m not looking for a pat on the back, but I think the process was nice. I knew what it sounded like, but to then know what I was reading into was fun as well.
My first impressions of this book from listening to it was that it was action packed and a lot of fun. That expectation didn’t differ when I went back to read it. This is a story not only about a man overcoming odds, but a team coming together to work as one. We have a lot of major issues that are dealt with in this story, from racism, specism, classism, military state vs civilian state ethics, and so much more. Are people the only people? Well, on Joth that answer is no, while on Trietra that’s a resounding yes. For me, this was nice. It was like watching some kind of planetary version of reality and I really enjoyed the backdrop.
I also enjoyed the military differences. I wasn’t in the military, but my husband served. Every now and again he regales my children and me with stories of war, and what he used to do. The kids find it riveting, but it’s very technical when he tells us about it. Kevin didn’t do that with this book, what he did was make military tactic and ideas of combat easy to understand for someone like me. He made the ideas of his world and his world building simple to understand but not so simple that it was condescending.
He also made aliens feel real. I come from Texas, having a species of possums is lovely to me, and having them be the ones that do a lot of work and militarily brilliant, made me happy. Possums are common around here, I needed the visual of possums who can fight! Another positive thing that I truly enjoyed was no huge morality debate on AI because it was softly poached if you will, in the broth of newness. There is AI, it does have its own personality and soul, and how that person was interacted with was enjoyable.
Critiques, well I found a few spelling issues. There was, for example, the word “guidance” spelled with extra c’s and likely that was because of a typo or added C. It’s not the end of the world, there are a few issues like that in the book, extra or missing letters, but it’s worth mentioning.
Story structure critiques had to do with some off page resolutions. For example, there was one minor antagonist who had a redemption off of the page to a background character. He came back later and made amends, but I felt like he really needed an on page kick in the teeth. That’s just me though, maybe I hold grudges. The main point here in my critique some resolutions done off the page I felt could have been nicer on the page, but it probably would have made the book very long and likely was edited out.
This story does have a complete beginning, middle and ending to the points that were raised, and it also left a lot that could be developed for a future series. It is part of a trilogy book, which is great because I’d like to read more. I enjoyed that the story itself was a whole story. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to have a whole and complete story in a series starter.
Score
Score here is going to be 90/100 which is a five-star review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you liked Guardians of the Galaxy vol 1, I recommend this story, just as much as any great space teamwork story. It was a whole lot of fun. I’d like to thank KC Johnston for sending this my way!
