Colonist Soldier

A Science Fiction Harem Adventure

By: Dan Raxor, Tyler Bowman

Narrated by: Patrick Dubois, Nina Harmony

Length: 23 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's summary

Devious criminals, bloodthirsty aliens, a colony in despair, and one hardened veteran!

Vesta Colony has a problem: Aliens are snatching men until they disappear for good. Humanity's defensive forces are stretched too thin to help a distant outpost, and so, the desperate founders, as well as their investors, are given the bad option of recruiting the worst while bribing the rest.

When Alex's wife was murdered, he turned full vigilante. After years of having a sterling record, he found himself willingly incarcerated to exact his vengeance. His incarceration eats at his soul until an offer too good to refuse from Vesta Colony changes his fate. While he's more than happy to get out from behind bars, the fact colonies treat humans like cattle means he understands what he's signing up for.

Except...

There's more to this situation than a hardened veteran anticipates. Life won't be easy, issues won't stop rearing their ugly heads, and the lovely beauties who need his protection make Alex's head spin. Oh, and the rumor is, there's an army of testicle-eating aliens trying to turn in him into a snack.

Join Alex as he crossed the void to become the Guardian of Vesta Colony!

©2023 Royal Guard Publishing LLC (P)2023 Royal Guard Publishing LLC

great book

its a good story line keeps your attention and has you using your imagination. can't wait for the next in the series.

It was ok

Very long winded story when it could have been over if the mc ended a threat. It has lots of parts that were good but just as a many awful parts. For example every villain is the same just obnoxious ass holes. This was a slight disappointment

Alot of angst

Its a good one. Kinda long. Great narration. Like the world building. Characters are good. Overall liked it.
Just gonna say Mc should have un alived Surono as soon as he was able. That whole leave the bad guy alive only works for batman.

Can humans and aliens share a world?

As required by U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations and Audible.com requirements, I am disclosing that I was given a free review copy of this audiobook. I have listened to the audiobook, and I have voluntarily left an honest review. Receiving a review copy did not influence my rating nor my review.

“Colonist Soldier” is an excellent audiobook; the story, characters and narration are all well-done! There are many things different about this book than is typical in current haremlit. First, the MC (Alex) is a 38yo man, with experiences that make him a believable leader in the story. Secondly, while his main adversary is definitely evil, there are many men in the story who are good people; this isn’t a story where all the men except the MC are evil or losers. Thirdly, while several women are happy to join team Alex, they don’t all throw themselves at him immediately. Some women never want to play on his team. This is a science fiction story first, and a haremlit story second.

MC Mark is not an ordinary man, and he puts the welfare of others ahead of his own needs. At the same time, he’s not a saint. After fifteen years serving in a mercenary army, he served time in prison for a revenge killing. His main adversary, Serrano, is an excellent villain. He’s very believable as he lies and corrupts others around him as he seeks to accomplish his own goals.

In addition to the struggles between colonists, there’s a life-and-death struggle between natives of the planet (Jargars) and the colonists. Much of that struggle reminded me of the Star Trek (The Original Series) episode “The Devil in the Dark”. Natives of the planet (Hortas) suddenly begin killing humans mining for the rare mineral, pergium. Through the Vulcan mind meld, Spock is able to communicate with the Horta, and discovers the creatures are intelligent, and began attacking the miners to protect the Horta children.

For those who view Alex as a James Bond character (a thug with a license to kill for the “good guys”), and Serrano as a Bond villain - you’ll be glad to know that the story has an excellent “Q” in the terrific Vitale!

There’s plenty of steamy action in the book with Alex and his women (the humans and the wonderfully lifelike android Kristina!), but as the author said, this book isn’t erotica, it’s a science fiction story. Personally, I’m happy it had both elements!

The epilogue serves as cliff-hanger, and I can’t wait for book 2 (scheduled for publication in two weeks, with the audiobook to follow soon after!). For those keeping score, book 3 will be published April 30th!

What did I hear?!

Hampfisted is the best way i can discribe this entire novel. it blows my mind how contrived the antagonist and problems of this novel is.

Every leader and authority figure in this book is utterly incompetent. I understand mismanagement and corruption can happen anywhere, but the levels this takes it to is mind boggling.
The people of Vesta, the planet the majority of this book takes place in, are ridiculously stupid, willfully ignorant, and utterly passive. They are straight-up lemmings, and I rips me out of the narrative every time something "political" happens. The villains are mustache twirlingly evil, and atrocious in what they do. Belladona, an annoyingly persistent antagonist, is not clever, nor is she charismatic. She is soooooo obnoxiously self-serving and incompetent that I struggle to believe she ever made it to a position of power or even able to maintain it.

The heroes of this story are no better. They're entirely passive and reactionary. It's hard to cheer for them when they fail spectacularly at every incounter.

I like the setting, but I can't get very immersed when the thought "every problem they have can be solved with a microphone" prance through my mind.
Considering that this is set in a future where humans are star fairing and literally everyone has a wrist mounted communication device, it bugs me that no one ever can produce a single bit of proof when the bad guys openly admits to schemes and explains their plans.

I can't even articulate what bothers me clearly, so I'll just stop here.
The narrators are fine, nothing spectacular. They do the job well enough but can't save this story.

If you get this, be prepared to turn your brain off for hrs at a time or prepare to get VERY frustrated.

5 stars

Well done. Well narrated.  will be looking forward to the next from this author. I received this copy free in exchange for an honest review.

Good

No complaints good story grate ending last of action both under the sheets and on the field. Moving on the book two a little saddened that it’s not even half as long as book one but let’s hear it

5 stars

Another great book by Dan Raxor. You will not be disappointed. Also the dual narration really brings the story to life. I received a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

A truly intriguing book!

Love a good story where an old vet get another chance and this one does just that, giving him a chance to redeem himself and do the right thing yet again. Also... the whole testy eating aliens thing was a bit cringy, so yeah he needs to get out there and do what he do!! Well done, and love the dual narration as well!

Received free for an honest review

Ok, but tedious and contrived

First, some examples may be used from the story, so spoiler warning!

So, I guess I have to be THAT guy who won't shill out a 4-5 star review for the sale of the algorithm hijinks. Sigh.

Positives: 1) Dan Raxor/Marcoss Sloss usually writes dialogue in a clunky, almost robotic way. In this story, most of the dialogue is severely better than what I’ve experienced in Raxor/Sloss’ previous works. Maybe this was Tyler Bowman’s influence, because I did see some classic Raxor/Sloss hiccups that usually pull me out of the narrative. 2) I finished this book, it’s the first Raxor/Sloss book I managed to push my way through despite some of the issues. 3) If you’re the type of person that can completely turn their brain off. Completely. Then, the story is not that bad that you might enjoy it. Unfortunately, I’m not that type of person and when things start propping up that cause me to raise an eyebrow or recall certain things that contradict things or that certain things were brought up and then forgotten and brought up again as if they never were brought up, etc. I gradually start to lose enjoyment with the story. But, as I said, I got through this.

So, on to the criticism.

The Beginning. I’m going to focus on the beginning because it’s a testimony to how the authors handle the overall story. It was exhausting, and I don’t mean that in a good way. It was tedious to get through and extremely contrived. Much of the problem stems from the authors incapability to make the Big Bads clever and capable without diminishing all authority figures on the colony ship. Let me point out, that the “worst” who are recruited in the blurb are convicted hardened criminals, some murderers. So, you have them on a star ship and the authors WANTED a hijacking to take place. MC and his male best friend find out about the hijacking plan because the Big Bad offers MC second-in-command in his gang. MC turns him down. My problem with the beginning set up started for several reasons. The explanation of everything going on at the upcoming Vesta colony started to make less and less sense, but I got over it because the authors revealed that the corporation sending them out there and the colony ship representatives didn’t fully know what was going on and, to some degree, being deceptive. Ok, fine.

The next issue here, was that MC and his best friend are said to have taken down MC’s former co-paramilitary-warfighting teammates. Yet, MC and his best friend meander about the ship at the beginning never taking action on the hijacking plan until the very last minute. The issue after this is that the authority figures are forced to be grossly incompetent in order for the hijacking plan to look like it’s starting to come to fruition.

The authors try to invoke that you can’t fire guns on a star ship else it will breach the hull. Ok, fine. But there are other weapons, even in our time as I type this, which do not fire projectiles. Called STUN WEAPONS, you know, stun/taser guns, stun/taser batons, etc. Heck, this is Sci-Fi, they could’ve went further, gave them stun blades, stun gloves, stun fields, etc. Nope. Authors force the security on this vessel to have to resort to hand-to-hand combat to keep the order. Then authors invoke that the security doesn’t have that much experience and the leadership is beyond arrogant thinking they could handle the situation when MC and his best friend try to warn them. The captain of the ship is too insulted, in so many words, that MC and his best friend had to break into his cabin by beating up his security guards just to be able to talk with him face to face. Which, by the way proved MC and his best friend’s point about the lacking ability of the ship’s security. Yet, authors force the captain to be foolish to get their way with the plot. It’s all contrived and not organic and too many contrivances happen throughout the story. This was just one example from the beginning. Oh, I should also mention that the beginning arc took 15 chapters to end and for the story to finally move to the planet, Vesta.

Another example of the tediousness. While on Vesta, the authors repeat the trope of having incompetent authority figures. This is embodied in the female Big Bad chairwoman on the council, but authors explain her incompetence through her greed, but it’s also embodied in the commander of the Defense Force. While listening to the Commander and MC talk about the bad tactics and defenses around the colony and the mine, the major place where the hostile natives attack, the commander tells him that he can’t get anything approved by the council. Let me break this down a little. The Vestan Defense Force, as they’re called, shuttles miners to and from the mine and protect the mine as well as the colony. They’re underfunded and undermanned because of the Big Bad chairwoman. I found myself asking why the Commander didn’t just refuse to send his men to their deaths to protect the mine, nor shuttle miners to the mine. It would’ve put the Big Bad chairwoman in a predicament. Sure, she would’ve played politics, but that’s when the Commander equally plays politics back with his own rhetoric exposing her nonsense. Instead, he just gave in.

The political thing leads me to another point. The authors would consistently have the good guy faction, specifically MC, ignore obvious solutions to their problems with the Big Bad Councilwoman and the Big Bad Gang leader as well as the native hostiles. With the evil chairwoman, they just had to play politics and fire back with their own rhetoric. Good guy faction rarely did this, was always behind, reacting to evil chairwoman’s schemes until authors felt it was time to force the plot. In the beginning, MC and his bestie never thought to form a faction of their own of men who wanted to go to Vesta and counter the Big Bad’s faction, instead, they meandered and reacted at the last minute. The authors wanted to get into the political intrigue around the council factions, but never gave the political atmosphere depth. I found myself thinking that they wrote this likely thinking about a larger population of people, where more people can be apathetic to politics and legislation passed or how promises would work, but we’re talking about a colony here of maybe the upper hundreds to low thousands in numbers. Something akin to a small town. A place where everything is attached to everything. One criticism I want to give here about the supposed political intrigue is that despite me thinking that in-universe it was a silly idea, MC’s entourage decides to have him and MFC1 run for office. MC, I understood based on his military experience, etc. MFC1 brought nothing to the table. I felt the authors missed a chance to explore this story arc and give MFC1 a chance to explore the colony by making her interested in doing something else other than follow MC into the defense force. She could’ve went into any other section of the colony and the authors could’ve had her discover more evidence of Evil Chairwoman’s incompetence and they use that during the election. Nope.

Equally, MC is conveniently told just in time that he’s Unique-Unique and those Unique-Unique abilities manifest not too long after his second or third confrontation with the hostile natives. Which gives MC a solution to the ongoing conflict between the colonists and the hostile natives. Yet, authors have MC ignore, deny, ignore, meander, deny, ignore, etc. when this ability manifests during confrontations with the hostile natives. Even when other characters who find out about MC’s Unique-Uniques and tell him that the one in particular might be able to end the conflict with the hostile natives, MC’s in denial. There’s also a point where MC walks into the lab of a “mad scientist” who uses a device that does the same thing that MC’s abilities does that could’ve served as the answer. Yet, MC never considers this. In fact, authors had the habit of MC asking someone to do something super serious important and then forgetting about it and when the person comes to them saying they were done with the super serious important thing, MC would ask them, “Why are you here?” only to have the person have to remind him of why they’re there. Yes, even if MC asked them to do this thing just a day prior.

One more example, there was the atmosphere around the colony. Both during the beginning arc and when the MC’s get to Vesta, you’re told how dire the situation is at the colony. They’re running out of a population to run the place. The colony was in danger of failing. Yet, the people around the colony never act like that’s a thing until a particular point in the plot where the people start visibly acting like that’s a thing. Instead, they’re all oversexed, open with sex, flirtatious, etc. This is supposedly justified because the colony was trying to keep producing new children to replace the deaths of those lost. Still, you’d have an abundant amount of people suffering losses, and an abundant amount of people fleeing the colony. Yet, the colony could’ve been a normal city except for when the authors told you it was supposed to be this place on its last leg.

These are just a few examples and all of this just made the story feel tedious and contrived.

Lastly, of course, you have the usual harem tropes. MFC1 gets most of the relationship development and somewhat character development. MFC2 & 3 are warp speed romance and their relationship development amounts to being push and flirting, especially MFC2. She started being pushy about forming a harem not too long after she met MC and MFC1. MFC2 became pushy later after she practiced some voyeurism and saw MC and MFC1 making out in the pool. You also have obligatory bisexualism. The authors attempt to justify this with the aforementioned “openness” about sexy in the colony, but it ultimately makes less sense if the colony is supposed to be hyper-focused on population increase. Plus, the backstory for why polygamy started to be embraced doesn’t explain it as that just gets into women embracing the idea of sharing one husband rather than stealing husbands from each other. I don’t know what it is about HaremLit and the authors being incapable of writing a harem where the whole harem doesn’t turn into polyamory. Yes, that’s polyamory. Not Harem. I don’t care if the girls get it on once, twice, but when it’s an all the time thing and they’re talking about loving each other as in love beyond friendship or we’re just sharing this man and I care for you in a platonic, not intimate way, then it’s polyamory.

I should also add that one of the harem members do something so heinously stupid that I felt that MC needed to just call it quits with her. I'm fine with conflict in the harem, but this member's decision endangered all of their lives as well as the lives of the colonists. And it was a purely selfish decision that she justified ridiculously, and yet, by the end, she was forgiven. Sigh.

While I do think Patrick Dubois and Nina Harmony did a good job, one thing I’d have to criticize is I think Nina made Ellie sound waaay, way too young. She sounds like a nasally teenager. Annette also equally, sounds like she’s constantly talking in a whisper. Aside from that, as I said, great job narrating.

As I said, this story is not horrible if you can completely turn your brain off. I couldn’t, and these are a few things that forced me to lower the score. I was nice and gave it 3 stars.