The Complete Clockwork Chimera Saga: Books 1-5

The Clockwork Chimera, Book 6

By: Scott Baron

Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny

Length: 53 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

Yanked from cryo to join a crew of modded humans in deep space? Daisy's life just got a whole lot more complicated.

As if nearly burning up in a freak accident on her way to Earth wasn't bad enough, Daisy had a whole mess of other trouble on her plate. Big trouble. And she was going to get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing she'd do, which it was starting to look like it very well might be.

The thing is, Daisy had a simple rule for space travel. Don't blow up, and so far she'd been managing to abide by that, but mere survival wasn't enough.

With the powerful AI supercomputer guiding the craft beginning to show some disconcerting quirks of its own, and its unsettling cyborg assistant nosing into her affairs, Daisy's unease was rapidly growing, as was her bigotry toward artificially intelligent beings. Add to the mix a crew of mechanically enhanced humans, any one of whom she suspected might not be what they seemed, and Daisy found herself with a sense of pending dread tickling the periphery of her mind.

Something was very much not right, she could feel it in her bones. The tricky part now was going to be overcoming her biases and figuring out what the threat was, before it could manifest from a mere sinking feeling in her gut into a potentially deadly reality. Only things were quite different and much worse than she could ever have imagined, forcing her to repeatedly adjust and overcome a reality that turned out to be far from what it had originally seemed. And it was looking like Daisy wouldn't have to save only herself, but the entire planet Earth in the process.

The complete series set of all five of the Clockwork Chimera books:

1. Daisy's Run
2. Pushing Daisy
3. Daisy's Gambit
4. Chasing Daisy
5. Daisy's War

©2018 Scott Baron (P)2022 Scott Baron

Pretty good

It started out a bit slow then it got a lot better. Thank you very much.

Just started. Not a good beginning. Minor spoilers

Book one reads like an inexperienced author. For example, it is supposed to take place in the far future, but contains plenty of modern expression that were not used 5 decades ago, and probably won't be in use 5 decades from now. It just seems out if place for the mood the author wants to build.

Also, the author used a few devices to create tension that just don't work the way he hoped. The bigotry mentioned in other reviews is a device used to separate the main character from the others. However, a technician with an aversion to technology (the bigotry mentioned) seems very hard to believe for anyone who knows techs in real life.

Second, the maggufin in the first book: the MC is convinced the crew is involved in a conspiracy and begins to act against them. Several times, they are in contact, and the crew says, "just surrender and let us explain everything." Never do they try to explain when they gain contact. They just beg her to listen later. It doesn't make any sense.

Posted reviews improve for the later books, so I will stick to it a while longer.

No wonder they sell them all together...

After completing this saga i now know why they included the entire series in one credit because if i didnt get them all together I'd have stopped listening after the first book.. It was pretty bad. First ill give my ratings for each individual book.
Daisy's run: 2 stars
Pushing Daisy: 3 stars
Daisy's Gambit: 3 stars
Chasing Daisy: 4 stars
Daisy's war : 4 star's
The main problem i had with this book was the characters. The concept of the story had promise but for some reason the author felt like he had to make his characters behave like middle school children. Daisy has this obsessive, cruel dislike of all things cyborg or inorganic which could make sense at the beggining IF you look past how her entire existence up to that point had been... I'll say closely controlled as to not give too much away. But after that when she finds the majority of humans are modified in some way except her it goes beyond irrational into unbelievable. Then both her and Sarah are petulant and stubbornly in denial about their OBVIOUS feelings towards the guys they like past the point of annoyance into the realm of pure frustration and again unbelievability. What are they 12? Like i say they act like children. Then both Daisy and her AI companion feel this irrational need to keep all these secrets from everyone else that either dont make sense to keep secret or its something thats vital to know and people end up dying because they feel its more important to keep their secret than to let it out and save lives. In the first book it honestly could've been cut in half beacuse of the amount of time he dragged the story on with an unrealistic chain of miscommunications and withholding of information when us as the audience can obviously tell that things are not as they seem and theres a probable explanation but for SOME reason none of the crew will just come out and explain it AND Daisy refuses to listen to anything once they start to try. But of course they never actually say anything of importance cus thatd make too much sense they just say "Its not what you think!". So that book was pure frustration. Once we get past the 3rd book the author isnt leaning so much on misinformation and stupid decisions to move his plot forward anymore so things get alot more bearable but then they get into the simplisticly impossible scifi stuff which i dont mind so much as long as it comes with a good story which as i mentioned before this story does have some promise but the way it was executed and the characters actions and dialog bring it down but the 4th and 5th book were alot better overall, still had alot of annoying things that the characters did like bringing an AI back to life then holding him hostage and getting mad when he wants to listen to other people talk and then breezing over it when he finally frees himself like the person who held him hostage wasnt even the slightest bit in the wrong🙄 Another small thing that kina started grating on me after a while was how often they said "is all" like "i was just waiting for later is all". At first its not noticeable but after the 1000th time it starts to hit your ear hard. So overall id have to give these books a 3 and i couldnt in good conscience recommend them to anyone else even getting all 5 for 1 credit. Just not enough good to make up for all the bad🫤

Humanity

We’ll slow start but detailed it was. This was a great example of how humanity technology designers plan. A very good space opera and one I would like to hear more of. My next long series has challenges. As I have read or audibles almost all of Star Wars book and many other series and this one is ranked in my top 10.
To all involved, good job and thanks for many hours of distraction from thousands of data point entries a day.

Excellent sci fi

Loved the characters, the aliens, the evil Roz, and the amount of twists and turns. Plot arc was fun and the references to “old” movies we’ve seen was Player One-esque.

predictable, overly light hearted, had me frustrated

the first three books were ok. not bad, not great. I frequently found myself saying out load that they needed to check on this or that plot thread, or what about this?? while waiting for the author to finally get there.

it's a very light hearted series where the protagonist finds she frequently can't fail for trying. there are a few moments of Deus Ex Machina which get swiftly glossed over for story sake.

then you start book four and the author goes back and fills in all those moments with the character herself fixing the plot with time travel.

the author leans so heavily on this plot device that eventually all the major conflicts are sewn up by time travel "Bill and Ted style". they decide that their future selves will jump into the past to set up events to help their present selves. despite spending lengthy parts of the series once time travel is a thing talking about paradox, the author writes in closed time loop after closed time loop with more and more predictable results.

this is entirely not even mentioning the biggest issue I had with the character development of the first three books, the heroine being a massive bigot against humans who have "replacement parts" without any reason for her to be a bigot. you quickly find out she was created/grown by AI and people with cybernetic parts, never has a bad experience or reason to hate cyborgs, and she just suddenly hates them passionately, while at the same time is the only person in existence as far as she knows fully human. it would be like a child is born hating adults. it deeply colors the character in a bad way, without cause, and gets entirely resolved in half a book, like bigotry isn't all that bad, you know?

I did finish the series. I predicted all of the major plot twists except how the last battle is won, but when that gets explained I really wanted to throw my hands up and be done. luckily the series wraps up in lightning speed from there.

I didn't hate it, but I would not recommend it. unless you need noise on to wash the dishes.

complicated downcheck

pros are complex issues of self introspection and selfhood doubt

cons bodice ripper not my thing

Great very well-thought-out univer!

This is an excellent series and amazing universe I enjoyed this one just as much as I did the dragon mage series.

overall fun story

the story had a few story lines that were obvious but over all I enjoyed it, I read all 5 books in the course of a week or 2. I started the first and couldn't stop.

Very interesting story line with a main character that is brilliantly dense for much of the storyline.

This is a series of books about the cost of secrets. The main character is a conspiracy theorist and bigot with no indication of how that comes about. She keeps secrets from everyone while also calling them friends. She is supposed to lead others, and often does that, but she keeps critical information from everyone. Even when she learns that that could do irreparable harm. In the end things all work out but it usually looks like luck is the key element.