The Stars Now Unclaimed

By: Drew Williams

Narrated by: Brittany Pressley

Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

The Stars Now Unclaimed by Drew Williams is a fun, adventure-filled ride around a far-future galaxy. Think big guns, smugglers, epic space battles, and a telekinetic girl with all the gifts.

Jane Kamali is an agent for the Justified. Her mission: to recruit children with miraculous gifts in the hope that they might prevent the Pulse from once again sending countless worlds back to the dark ages.

Hot on her trail is the Pax - a collection of fascist zealots who believe they are the rightful rulers of the galaxy and who remain untouched by the Pulse.

Now Jane, a handful of comrades from her past, and a telekinetic girl called Esa must fight their way through a galaxy full of dangerous conflicts, remnants of ancient technology, and other hidden dangers.

And that's just the beginning....

©2018 Drew Williams (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"[Narrator Brittany Pressley's] narrative abilities bring each character to life...in this pulse-pounding space opera. Science fiction fans will be riveted from the opening to the epic conclusion." (AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winner)

Not a bad journey

The Stars now Unclaimed by Drew Williams receives four stars from me (however, I was tempted for three).

This was an audio book so first a word about the reader. Brittany Presley read this novel and I found her work to be good. Her voices for the main characters (even the men) were pretty good. (Although, her female voices were the best, better than pretty good.) For the main character, I felt Presley did a fine job of interpreting her and bringing her to life. I liked her overall vibe with this book. I would listen to another book read by Presley.

Now on to the book

First let me say this book would have been better (in my opinion and before you panties wad up, this is my review which is my opinion.) if the book were written in third person. I felt that the scope of the first person point of view limited the actual story. Because everything is from that one perspective we never truly get to know what others are thinking.

The main character, who will be nameless in this review as she will reveal her name to you when she's ready, for me at times repeated herself. "And I'm good at it." yes we know, you've told us that like three or four times already--you are good at war. It felt like posturing to me.

I'd like to have a third person text from time to time. Personally, I'm getting bored with first person narratives, where I'm supposed to think that the character is in real deadly danger but she's not because well, you are telling us a story of the past, so no real tension.

In terms of concepts and world building I enjoyed this text a lot. I liked the pulse concept very much. Seems original to me (but it might not be, I'm not that well read). In terms of world building I felt that Williams does a good job. The Pax are revealed slowly and as the novel progresses we learn more and more about them.

However, I'm going to say this. I think there is more that can be done with this. Let's talk bout character. I think the main character changes some. I think that Esa changes some. I'd like to see more however.

All in all, I enjoyed this book except for the long battles. This book is book one of the series, so yeah there's more.

Recommended: sure, its a good story and good characters.

Decent story, mediocre writing

Lots of contradictions and inconsistencies in the internal logic of the book. A reasonably engaging story that suffered from mediocre writing.

Very strong start, very sorry finish.

This book has the potential to be excellent however the author spent so much time describing battles and conflicts and wars that he forgot to finish the story. Has a lot of potential unfortunately it was wasted

Hollywood is missing something special.

had never heard of the book or story at. needed something to listen to on a road trip and ended up listening to this amazing adventure. i love the blend of action along with the characters. the author does a great job getting the reader to care on the outcome. i look forward to book 2

Fun read

It was a fun read. It started slow but continued to get more interesting as it went on. Lots of interesting characters .

All combat, all the time

Well done, if that’s your thing. Pity the underlying premises weren’t more fully explored, but there’s not much more than a veneer of plot.

Ho-hum

Not horrible, but felt like a producer asked for a screenplay "like Star Wars"...but just different enough. Nothing original, nothing unique, complete with cardboard cutout space-nazi antagonists. Narration was decent.