Caretaker

Caretaker Series #1

By: Josi Russell

Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor

Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

Ethan Bryant was supposed to fall asleep on a ship leaving Earth and wake up 50 years later with his family on the planet Minea. Instead, after the ship's caretaker - the lone human in charge of monitoring the ship's vital systems - suddenly died, the ship's computer locked Ethan out of his stasis chamber and gave him the job. That was five years ago. Five years of checking to make sure everything ran smoothly on a ship Ethan knows almost nothing about. Ethan is resigned to his fate until the ship suddenly wakes up another passenger: a beautiful engineer who, along with Ethan, soon discovers a horrible secret - a navigation room hidden from even the ship's computer. The ship is not bound for Minea but somewhere far more dangerous. With the ship nearing its sinister destination, Ethan soon learns that he is the only one who holds the key to saving all 4,000 passengers from a highly advanced, hostile alien race.

©2015 Josi Russell (P)2016 Tantor

started editing off ok

starter off ok but then it got crazy with the super advanced aliens who could move things with a thought. and they wanted people for slaves but why they would want slaves who knows

imaginative story

To be honest, I tend to prefer hard science fiction. I don’t have a problem with space opera if the world building is well done and fantasy elements are at least self consistent.

Unfortunately, Caretaker suffers from a couple of problems: the emotions are dialed up to 11. not in a bodice shredder way, but every situation is fraught with desperate love, noble restraint, violent hatred and the like.

The first act is actually a well constructed shipboard mystery. However, the second act devolves into an encounter on an alien world with super evil aliens with special powers. Conveniently ,the evil experiments the aliens perform on the protagonists give them special powers too.

If you can overlook these issues, Caretaker is an entertaining listen.

Very good story telling.

Throughout the story of "Caretaker" I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. The narration was great, the story was too.

Great story. held my attention all the way

Really enjoyed this book. Each time I laid it down I looked forward to getting back to it. The characters and narration provided just the right amount of suspense, concern, compassion and cheer.

Good story. Meh narrator

A short but fun sci-fi story. The Squirrley sounding narrator needed a bit of improvement though.

Excellent!

Love it! I can't wait for the 2nd in series. Keep writing please. word words

narration was good, but couldn't repair story.

a little too preachy for me. Maybe ok for young
teenagers. Just didn't do it for me.

Loved it

It had some interesting turns that I didn't expect. Ended great, although I do wish something more could have been done for Kaia. Maybe her changes could have slowed her aging or they could have thought staggering every five year across the 2 of them or better yet 10 of the passengers. They would only losing 5yrs a piece instead of 1 losing 50yrs. Otherwise, really enjoyed it. Thanks.

Great book.

Simply amazing. So great and no explicit language to gave to worry about for young readers.

Not for me

Listened for two hours hoping for the sci fi to kick in, but no, first half of the book is a love story that just drug on and on. After two hours I started listening to the first sentence of each chapter and skipping ahead. This was so drawn out I was able to skip several chapters and really didn't miss anything. Things picked up a little when it got to the sci fi section but not enough to recommend this book. Book could easily be half the length and be all the better for it. I am not one for guessing the ending but this one was very predictable, the only thing that surprised me was the author did not put a cliff hanger ending in the attempt to get you to go onto book 2. I seem to be in the minority so hopefully you will like it better than I did.