Orphanage

Jason Wander, Book 1

By: Robert Buettner

Narrated by: Adam Epstein

Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Mankind's first alien contact tears into Earth: Projectiles launched from Jupiter's moon, Ganymede, vaporize whole cities. Under siege, humanity gambles on one desperate counterstrike. In a spacecraft scavenged from scraps and armed with Vietnam-era weapons, foot soldiers like 18-year-old Jason Wander-orphans that no one will miss-must dare man's first interplanetary voyage and invade Ganymede.

They have one chance to attack, one ship to attack with. Their failure is our extinction.

©2004 Robert Buettner (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Fun read for Heinlein fans

While this book has its roots in Heinlein's Starship Troopers, it has enough differences to make it both fun and interesting. There are some anachronisms that detract, such as sown on stripes to what amount to space armor. The author uses a lot of cliche phrases but for me these didn't detract. In all an enjoyable read and listen -- the audible performance was excellent.

Poor choice of narrator for a decent book

As someone who thoroughly enjoys military science fiction, this book is well done, if a bit cliché! The story is obviously influenced by Heinlein, and some aspects feel over done. There are other parts of the story that were very fresh and fun to imagine as I listened. I have become almost addicted to listening to my books on Audible these days, and fall asleep to them in the back ground thanks to the wonderful sleep timer! However, while meaning no disrespect to Adam Epstein, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed listening to a book LESS than I did this one. His tonal quality, rhythm and meter for reading this book felt forced and over done. The best way I can think of to describe his reading style is that of a tour guide on their very first day still reading off the script to get every thing just right… and yet they still have that weary, bored tone that tour guides get after saying the same thing over and over for years.

The person with the reading style perfect for this book, and the one I would have paid DOUBLE to hear this book read by is Oliver Wyman!!! Again, no disrespect to Adam Epstein, but in my opinion he just does not have the correct tone or rhythm or meter to read this book.

A worthy tribute and a good book in its own right.

Any reader of Heinlien and the other great military Sci Fi authors will feel very comfortable just a few minutes into Orphanage. It is obvious where the author drew inspiration from but he manages to do so without making the book seem like a shallow copy or clone. The book itself is well written and fairly fast paced. It follows the traditional Sci Fi hero route of a troubled youth to a war hero all in 300 pages or less. One of the aspects I very much enjoyed was the use of old (at least to the characters) equipment and training styles. The technology in the book is not so outlandish that it seems completely foreign to a dweller of the current age. The book slows in places and some of the cliche are annoying but never show stopping. I found the very defeatist feelings in the beginning of the book to be a bit of a downer but the fact the book made me feel anything is a good indication of how good it is. All in all I was very happy with my spur of the moment buy and look forward to seeing where Jason Wander goes from here.

Slow Burn

Lots of character development and a good story. The author isn't afraid to kill characters.

Great Story but bad narrator

What did you like best about Orphanage? What did you like least?

I loved the stories and the characters; however, I won't buy the series from Audible because the narrator, Adam Epstein.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

It sounded as though he was trying to sound like John Wayne. It was very distracting.

Fun, quick, sci-fi goodness

Any additional comments?

I am in full agreement with the other reviews. It's simple, fast paced, sci-fi. Very reminiscent of Starship Troopers in overall plot. The author does take some pains to keep the science plausible (gravity, lightspeed, propulsion, atmosphere.... issues that sometimes get glossed over.)

The narrator is mostly good except for the idiotic voices he comes up with. They're pretty awful.

Unique

The only issue I had with the book is how quickly the relationships formed. There was little character building or build up to them getting together. It just sort of happened.

A new favourite!

listened to the story start to finish in a day and a half, definitely a choice read for fans of action military sci-fi.

Flawed at times, but entertaining.

Im not saying this book is bad, but sometimes time gets away from the author.
As an example, without giving up too much of the plot, the decision to do something that takes 11 days is later mentioned someone else could have done it in 4 but they didn't because it would have taken longer.... Just say it would expose you or something, anything else.

Good story, but bad narration

The guy that reads the book really takes away from the story, but the story is solid, even given some of the shortcomings with the narration on the technology