Constitution

By: Nick Webb

Narrated by: Greg Tremblay

Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

The year is 2650. Seventy-five years ago, an alien fleet attacked Earth. Without warning. Without mercy. We were not prepared. Hundreds of millions perished. Dozens of cities burned. We nearly lost everything. Then the aliens abruptly left. We rebuilt. We armed ourselves. We swore: never again. But the aliens never came back. Until now. With overwhelming force the aliens have returned, striking deep into our territory, sending Earth into a panic. Our new technology is useless. Our new ships burn like straw. All our careful preparations are wasted. Now only one man, one crew, and the oldest starship in the fleet stand between the Earth and certain destruction: ISS Constitution.

©2015 Nick Webb (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

No surprise

Typical space opera with lots of ideas from other similar stories. I almost turned it off in the middle but I listened to the end to see if I was right...I was. A few hours of my life I won't get back.

sci Fi gold!!

this story has crazy good character. you will love it!! I was at the edge of my seat the entire time.

Entertaining BSG clone

Very similar to Battlestar Galactica, but that's not a bad thing. Very entertaining regardless and I couldn't stop listening.

Not the best for listening in the car with kids. The s-word comes out quite a bit when the action gets going. PG-13 for language.

Best space battles in the business

I love sci-fi, especially as it relates to space battles and war. In all my years reading science fiction I can’t recall coming across an author that writes and describes the events and activity in a space battle as well as Nick Webb. Seriously, his description, vision and explanation of each fleet action are so well choreographed and so well written that I felt like I was watching it all unfold. I was riveted and couldn’t put the book down. I’m new to the series, but on my way to buy book 2, Warrior, right now.

nothing but good things to say about this book

this book was full of action, great story, I loved every minute of this book. If I actually was reading the book it would be one of those that I could read very easily and still keep up with the story.

Better than it starts

First, the giant copy-written elephant in the room: I was so annoyed by what I saw as the blatant Battle Star Galactica rip-off of a premise that I nearly stopped listening. I even did some web searches to try to figure out how this author hasn't been sued. But, despite what he would call a "nod" or "tribute" coming across as blatant stealing for the first 15 chapters, it gets better. The action is great, the story is interesting, and the emotional bits are surprisingly touching. I came very close to returning this book at chapter 15. I'm glad I didn't. Now I'm actually going to buy the next one in the series.

Derivative, familiar

Nick Webb must watch the same TV shows I do. I also try to write, but when I find myself drifting too close to an idea someone has already used, or just flat out copying the idea, I stop and start over. Webb doesn't have that filtering process. He borrows pretty liberally from Battlestar Galactica, Ender's Game and little from Star Trek (A starship engineer named Scott? Sure! I'll just make her female!) before adding any twists and turns to make the story his own. Really, I thought I was listening to an alternate take on BSG for about half the book as I could almost assign book characters to TV characters one to one. The bummer with this take is the "Adama" (Grainger) is not as inspiring. He's just a blow hard who really shouldn't be as good at space navy tactics as *SPOILER* he may turn out to be.

Once the "borrowing" of familiar groundwork was done, I like he story itself and may continue with the series if they are on sale.

Pleasantly Surprised

This was a really book, fast paced interesting characters, interesting story, and well written. The reader was spot on with his performance. I can't wait to listen to the next book.

Epic Start to the Legacy Fleet Series

The Constitution is an old Legacy class ship, which has been called in to be turned into a Museum, much to the crew’s utter disgust. It is the last of the ships that defeated an enemy of aliens a long time ago in a war that nearly wiped out all of Earth and its fleet and all of the Earths colonies as well. But now the alien threat is gone, there are new ships with new ‘Smart Armour’, not the old style armour of the Constitution, which has 10metre thick armour all over her hull. Can anyone see where this is going?
The story does have the standard protagonists, the disgruntled, but Stoic Captain, the annoying but soon to be likeable Female Officer, who in this case is there to decommission the ship, and turn it into the museum, but ends up being the second in command alongside the already existing second in command, a gruff but trustworthy old friend who is loyal only to the Captain, and surprisingly doesn’t like the Female Officer. There is off course a brilliant Engineer and several other instrumental crew (command and otherwise) that make up a brilliant character list. And of course there is the dreaded Alien enemy, ‘The Swarm’ as they are known. They have previously been to Earth as mentioned, 75yrs before, and after a massive war, just left, but now they are back….and it's not really a surprise!! (I think you are reading the wrong book if it was?), but then again, if they didn’t come back, it would be a kind of pointless story – I mean where would the gripping space battles be!!
Yes we have all seen this story before, but it's what the Author does with it that counts.
And Nick Webb, as always, does an exceptional job. This is a tremendous story with astounding characters, and a clever and well written version of this genre. I really loved it. For starters, his characters are not immortal, and I have to give him major bonus points for that, I get sick of everyone always surviving every battle/engagement…
Although this is a well-worn path, Nick has given it his own flavour, and as such, his universe is captivating, beautifully detailed and with creative intelligent explanations. With his education, he is able to go into detail about the mechanics and technicalities a little more than most, giving his story a bit more of an edge I felt. The great thing is, he never gets too bogged down in detail, giving us just enough to make it interesting, but without making it tedious or getting lost in too much detail.
The action scenes and battles are gripping, strategic with compelling descriptions of the ship engagements, and I loved the weaponry used, and how it was described, the specific details he uses.
As for his characters, although I mentioned that they were a bit stereotypical, they still had depth to them, the Captain especially.
As with his battles and star scapes, Nick does a wonderful job with his Characters, giving us in depth characters to both love and hate. And as the story progresses, and his characters develop, you find that these opinions change as well, showing his talent for writing engaging and believable people to tell his story.
It's why his books standalone from the others, the exceptional writing.
This is a terrific read, well worth the effort, as his is other works. I have already started on ‘Warrior’, the second part of this series.
This is the first book in the start of the Epic series that is Legacy Fleet that has now spawned a second series and its own Kindle World series. If you want a Sci-Fi series to read - this is the one to start with.
As for the Narration - Greg Tremblay is absolutely brilliant, with a real gift for performance, different voices, providing emotive characters, and engaging the listener so that you feel as if you are being drawn into the story as you listen to it. I love Nick's work, but I actually prefer to wait for the audiobooks so I can listen to Greg read them, as he does such a brilliant job of bringing life to the characters that Nick has created, by captivating you with these gripping tension filled battle scenes and making sure that you can't stop listening as between the two of them, you just have to keep listening, with headphones, in the car, at home, everywhere, just to get a bit more.
This is some of the best Sci-Fi out there - don't miss it.

Snowempire

Starts out really strong and the writing is good, but the ending becomes a bit unrealistic in its attempt to wrap everything up perfectly.