The Io Encounter

Ice Moon 3

By: Brandon Q. Morris

Narrated by: Doug Tisdale Jr.

Length: 7 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

Jupiter's moon Io has an extremely hostile environment. There are hot lava streams, seas of boiling sulfur, and frequent volcanic eruptions straight from Dante’s Inferno, in addition to constant radiation bombardment and a surface temperature hovering at minus 180 degrees Celsius.

Is it really home to a great danger that threatens all of humanity? That's what a surprise message from the life form discovered on Enceladus seems to indicate.

The crew of ILSE, the International Life Search Expedition, finally on their longed-for return to Earth, reluctantly chooses to accept a diversion to Io, only to discover that an enemy from within is about to destroy all their hopes of ever going home.

©2018 Brandon Q. Morris (P)2019 Brandon Q. Morris

The Enceladus Mission series

This review addresses the entire series of The Enceladus Mission, which consists of four full-length novels: The Enceladus Mission, The Titan Probe, The Io Encounter, and Return to Enceladus. Read in sequence as most characters traverse all four books, as does the story.

Plot. A group of astronauts from several countries responds to a probe signal coming from the moon of a distant planet indicating potential life. Through the four novels, space travel is defined in painfully intricate detail. The entire series consists of a series of mundane problems, occasionally life-threatening, that arise with regularity - one after another. Expected relationships between characters develop, including a pregnancy. Shipboard AI's misbehave, save the day, stuff goes wrong, stuff gets fixed, etc.

Liked. The Enceladus Mission series is pure SciFi. The "what-if" possibilities are there, which in my opinion, makes the best SciFi. No drooling zombies, aliens with clicking knees, jump scares. No sex, no gratuitous profanity. Coincidently? Breakthrough Enceladus is a proposed privately funded astrobiology mission to look for macrobiotic life in the volcanic eruptions of water emanating from the moon - true - Google it.

Not so hot. Wording isn't particularly smooth - no contractions; more effort should have been applied to story rather than space technology, which can be boring to some readers. The ending left much unanswered.

Written by Brandon Q. Morris, narrated by Doug Tisdale Jr., each book in the area of eight hours of listening, all books released 2019.

Recommended to the nerds among us; lots of techy stuff to pick apart.

solid continuation

I want to see how the story turns out so this was kind of a necessary middle part. it's a solid continuation/ conclusion of the enceledous mission.

performance was mostly good but pronunciation of Chinese names was bad. I can appreciate that Chinese names arent easy but if you're saying a name hundreds of times in a story you should spend 2 minutes researching the correct pronunciation.

Good book in the series

I'm enjoying this series with its great story line and likable characters. I recommend this book...👍

not as good as first two books in the series

No more scifi in the book, just human fighting amount them self, not my cup of tea.
no need read this one and the fourth book, first two will be good.

Keeps the reader engaged

Great story with understandable nomenclature kept me interested in the details of scientific based story line. Made space travel to Jupiter moons believable

Degraded Mess

I did not like it. The book just swerved into nonsense. The Chinese Astronaut's parents are kidnapped by the Chinse and then taken to Guantanamo Bay where they are held prisoner by the U.S. to coerce her into murdering the crew and taking over the ship but the lifeform on Enceladus sends them to IO to warn them. I stopped listening at that point, it was just ridiculous.