Avenger

Sovereign Stars, Book 1

By: Blair Howard

Narrated by: Renée Maxwell

Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

Avenger

Five years after physicist Mark Holder discovered the Slipstream Drive in 2058, humanity reached for the stars and began to colonize the galaxy. For centuries, humans continued to populate system after system without encountering intelligent alien life.

Some 1,200 years later, after many generations of relative peace, in the year 3278, human space is invaded by a powerful and mysterious enemy. To these invaders, the very concept of free will is heresy. Their crusade—to eradicate humanity.

The war begins, and the fight for the survival of the human race is on.

Book one of Sovereign Stars, Avenger, is the first novel in a gripping, action-filled military space opera in which Avenger, under the command of Knight Captain Richard Morian, is sent to one of the outer star systems on a rescue mission. What he discovers there suggests the entire Orso Carrier Group is destined for annihilation.

©2022 Blair Howard (P)2022 Blair Howard

Story is decent, but audible narration was terrible

The story was pretty good and I finished the book in text form, but the audible narration was the worst I’ve ever heard.

This book was ok

I almost stoped listening to this book halfway through. It was just really slow in coming together. There are characters everywhere doing different things and I found my mind several times drifting off while listening. Even when it got interesting just after the half point or so I thought at most this is a 3-star book. Then the last third of the book or so it got very interesting. Things started to come together and make sense. So I decided at that point to give it a 4-star review because it ended with potential for the future.

Interesting Story

Interesting story with some unusual plot ideas but... the performance was awful, little to no energy and horrible emotion. The writing was "young". It read as a first time author with predictable and cliche over use.

Character Range of the narrator

Struggle to finish, not because of the story.... but the voices of all the characters sound to much the same and the different pitches or cadence didn't always stay with the right characters. Excitement was just expressed as a slightly louder....

Terrible

Narration is barely fair, sounds like an old time detective story. Just not believable. Sorry I wasted my money.

Narration was rough

As my headline said, the narration was rough. Trying to use words other than “absolutely terrible,” she sounded almost out of breath. Sentences and dialogue also had awkward pauses, almost as if she was enunciating the punctuation. Emotional context of the dialogue was almost nonexistent and when it was present it almost seemed incorrect. Like sarcasm, snark or flippant responses when I don’t think the context of the story warranted such. Or even when the author had specified in the book how someone said something, she completely missed it. I’m going on and listening to book 2 in hopes that some of these issues are resolved. The story is interesting enough to let me look past the narrator for now, but stay tuned

Good Story Bad Narration

The story it self is a good story, but the narrator doesn't really do anything for the book. There are mostly male personal including the main one, but they all have the same high nostril voice. Don't get me wrong. I understand that both male and females have limited range of pitch, but most try to give each character voice a different sound. Not so much here( that includes the female characters as well). Again I did like the book it self. there are some issues that if you are really science based you will have a little problem with, but over all nothing that will really get to you. I gave the narration a 1, and story a 4 over all a 3 just because I was thinking of the story itself. If you don't like bland narrators then Don't get this at all.

It’s the author not the narrator

I can not recommend this series. I always wondered what was more important the book or the narrator. This book proved it. It’s the author. The narrator made the book sound sophomoric but she did a series for FX Holden and she made it sound great. To make matters worse they changed narrators in book 3 and he sounded worse. I was amazed the new narrator pronounced some characters names differently including the main character. That means the narrator either didn’t listen to the first two books or the author never spoke with the narrator. Either way the story was poorly developed like it was hastily written.

terrific

Loved this book, Blair Howard wrote an amazing story. can't wait to get my hands on the next book in the series.

so far one of the worst narrators I've heard

trying trying to listen to the book between a narrator and story is pretty much self torture