Space Race

Space Race, Book 1

By: Nathan Hystad

Narrated by: Marc Vietor

Length: 8 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Ten teams. One grand prize. The Race is on.

Arlo Lewis was resigned to his station in life as a supply hauler for one of the Primary Corporations ruling Earth, until an acquisition forces him to re-evaluate his situation.

When he’s hand selected to lead SeaTech’s Race team, he struggles to return to the competitive field he abandoned as a teenager.

With an eager team, and the promise of a better future, Arlo takes on the challenge, only to find more at stake than the rights to Proxima.

Under the threat of a revolution brewing at the finish line, things don’t go as expected.

The galaxy will never be the same. But that may be exactly what Arlo needs.

Join Space Race today!

From the author of The Survivors and Baldwin's Legacy comes a thrilling new series.

©2021 Nathan Hystad (P)2021 Audible, Inc.

Notable Characters, Captivating Story

Nathan Hystad is an imaginative author. He drew me into this futuristic story with his engaging, relatable, flawed characters, compelling story arcs and unique plot. The settings, scenes and vivid world building created a thrilling immersive experience. The action increased in intensity as the story progressed. Once I started listening, I had to discover what happened next. The performance by Marc Vietor was quite enjoyable - he did an admirable job differentiating the voice of each character and expressing their feelings, reactions and excitement. Space Race is an excellent, entertaining start to a new unique series. I look forward to the next book. I was provided a free review copy of this audio book and am voluntarily leaving this review.

Hystad is Masterful – Utterly Exhilarating Ride!!!

Space Race is one of those fast paced, action packed books, that once you pick it up, you struggle to put down, as it is just so gripping, with these stunning cliffhanger scenes, a sensational race that is made up of multiple components, and racers (as in the actual ships, not the competitors). The tech in this book is just extraordinary, there are times that it almost starts to slip into a Hard Sci-fi the tech is so in-depth, so fascinating and compelling.
This is only matched by both the exceptional Characters, Hystad’s character building and development is just masterful, and this combines with his beautiful, gritty, and captivating world building. Hystad has created all these different places we get to visit, in this future that is dominated by Corporations.
In this future, there are lots of Corporations all vying for control of the resources within the Sol System. Humanity has been limited to the Sol System for now, but there has been talk of expanding to the Proxima System. This was tried once before, but it didn’t work.
So for now, EVERYTHING, is run by the Corporations. And the aim is to be in the Top 10 – if you aren’t in the Top 10, well, you don’t really count.
For recreation, there is a lot of racing (Things never change), and at the start of the book, we get to see a young racer by the name of Arlo ‘Hawk’ Lewis, who is brilliant, obviously gifted at the sport of Pod Racing, and destined for great things, having won numerous trophies and competitions already, with his Grandfather by his side as his racing partner and Crew Chief.
That is, until his Grandfather, who is a famous pilot, leaves to pilot the first ill-fated mission to Proxima. Arlo quits racing.
Jump forward 19yrs later, and we find Arlo (our main character by the way), doing cargo runs out to Eris for one of the 10.
There is a bit of backstory, before he is approached by Bryson Kelley, the man who runs one of the Major Corporations, called SeaTech.
With all of Sol now locked down by industry, and humanity needing more space, it has been decided that there should be another mission to Proxima, but rather than having all of the Corporations fighting over the new system, they are going to run a Space Race, and the winner gets the rights to Proxima. However, only the Top 10 Companies can enter, as they want to make sure that anyone who wins has the right amount of capital to expend on such a venture.
At the start of this, SeaTech is actually out of the Top 10, and this is when Arlo is asked to join the team, to be the Pilot in the Mandatory 4 person team for the Race.
I don’t want to spoil things, so I am not going to go into the individual characters here too much, I will just discuss characters in a general sense. Hystad does such a wonderful job in creating this broad spectrum on characters, from all walks of life, with a huge variety of backgrounds, race, religion, colour, everything. This is a future that is less worried about all that sort of stuff, and more worried about where your loyalties are with the company you work for. And if you are a particularly important person, you might find that you are offered substantial money to come work somewhere else, and test those loyalties. It is a fascinating, complex, and intricate world that Hystad has created. On one hand, there appears to be less discrimination in the sense that we know it, and yet, there is substantially more, based on wealth, who you work for, where you live etc. It is so well done, so clever.
When Arlo runs into old friends, who are living a different lifestyle to everyone he knows, he suddenly gets his eyes opened to some of the more insidious things going on in the background, and this makes for a really interesting twist, not the normal rebel scenario that you expect in this type of book either.
Each of the Characters has so much raw depth to them, so much individuality, it really adds to what is a clever and thrilling character driven story. Whilst there are a number of ‘Major’ characters, Hystad’s minor characters are so well done, that they contribute so much to the story.
This is such an in-depth story, from the history of the Races, and Arlo’s involvement, to Proxima and his Grandfather, and the incredible, multi-faceted, and utterly fascinating Corporate System, that reminds you of so many things, but also wondering if we are not careful – is that where we are headed? And then the Space Race.
I don’t want to give away anything about the Space Race – it is just so much fun, you will be glued to the pages, (‘Just one more Chapter…, Ok, I’ll just find out what happens….. Well, I might as well finish the Chapter…2hrs later, and 10 Chapters – you’re still going!!!) It reminded a LOT of Matthew Reilly, A.G Riddle, that face paced story in which there are a group trying to achieve a goal, faced by challenge after challenge, and most of them with great peril attached.
The race is mind-blowing, it would make the most unbelievable video game (and if we can ever get Virtual Reality up and running properly, it would be INCREDIBLE!!), but for now, you have to sink into the Spectacular imagination of Hystad, and enjoy this Masterful Story, with Exceptional Characters and a Race that is both Exhilarating and Terrifying!!!
Marc Veitor does a wonderful job with the Narration, providing a very clear, easy to understand voice, with great Male and Female character voices. Veitor does a good job of distinguishing between the voices so that you can easily understand who is talking. He also does an amazing job of capturing the emotional state of the characters so that you really understand how they are feeling as he Narrates the story, fully immersing you into the book. Overall the Narration is just brilliant, and is definitely worth listening to, easily a great choice for listening to rather than reading, as Veitor really brings this book to life.

interesting start

what they thought was going to be a simple space race turns into a bigger problem. Aliens are coming with their aim to take over earth.

Much better than I expected!

Having grown up in the late 90s/early 2000s, I've had more than my fill of aliens and space! But, Nathan seems to have a way of writing that still keeps me intrigued! Book 2 might turn out to be your run-of-the-mill alien invasion book, but after this, I'll let least give it a try!

Loved it!

A very good beginning to this series. Loved Arlo (but not the name.) It was mostly about a race of several teams vying to win the planet Proxima. Arlo (Hawk) Was sabotaged at every turn but always came out on top. Then came a “friendly” message from aliens and that started the excitement.

No romance and no swearing to speak of.

As for the narration: Marc Vietor did a fantastic job on the voices and the emotions when he read.