Mech 1: The Parent

I had read most of B V Larson’s StarForce series and, thinking that the series was not bad, decided to try this book. The premise, as explained in the Audible description, was that a long lost race returned to find humans had taken hold of their home world. I had assumed that there would be some kind of reasonable “first contact” between rational beings and that it might be worth reading how this was resolved. But the book disappointed me in many ways. There are no “spoilers” in this review, but I have listed what about this book made me feel disappointed.

First, the description is incorrect. The “home world” itself was physically destroyed and did not, as I assumed, only contain some kind of ruins. The humans did not inhabit the “home world” but an adjacent world. That is clear in the first 10 minutes of the book. The description was almost certainly provided by the publisher and so this is not Audible's fault.

Second, there is no “back story” to explain about the religious group and the story, as it unfolds, was almost unintelligible to me. I could not understand who they were, why they were acting as they were and why anyone would choose to make the decisions the reader eventually finds they have made. I could not help comparing those people with the characters in Heinlein’s "The Puppet Masters" since they were essentially in the same situation.

Third the characters seem to be more caricature than character. The villains have no saving graces at all and are either cowards, thieves, closet pedophiles, sadists or some combination thereof. The heroes and heroines seem to have no failings at all and, in the end, only one character seemed real to me at all.

Last, but not least, I found the reading to be less than stellar and, at least at the beginning, difficult to follow. Eventually I became familiar enough with the narration that it stopped bothering me but I always felt that it was a distraction from the book rather than being either neutral or a positive addition.

Mr. Larson’s web site says of this book that people either love it or hate it and I can believe that. Although I fall closer to the latter than the former I can see how people might find all of the weirdness appealing in books that often seen to be clones of one another. This book is definitely weird but the one positive thing I can say about it is that it is not a clone of anything else I have ever read. It would have been improved (for me) if there had been a prologue explaining who the various groups were and something about the “riders”, but perhaps I am not typical.

All in all I do not feel that I can recommend this book but I do feel that some people will positively enjoy it. I will not read any more of this series but I will continue to read B V Larson in the hope that the next book will be more to my liking.

Well, most of them.

I wanted to give up on this book after the first half hour but I stuck it out until half-way, at which point I felt that I had other audiobooks that I would prefer to try.

I found that I just didn't like any of the characters; the bad folks are too worthless and too numerous. I found that I just didn't care what happened next, so I gave up.

The one interesting point was seeing the Bugs (cf. Starship Troopers) from the Bugs point of view.

--Morton

narrator distracts classic larson

interesting to see from the aliens point of view. aliens jumping out of toilets, that's why I've always been a little nervous sitting on a toilet in the dark.

character voices are good, but rest of narration is distracting, kind of sounds like that guy from original star trek- George Takei.

no, character development was not strong enough to identify with, felt kind of choppy, I got this because I enjoyed Larson's star force series so much. It feels like an earlier work, with more of a space opera tone.

enjoyed it well enough to get the next book in the series, not sure if I will stick with the series after that though, hoping it gets better.

It is a fun listen, pretty light and not too deep. I could see this being made into a Scifi series for Netflix

I must start of by saying this. It took a long time for this story to get going and really engage me. Having said that though, the rest of the series really moves along. So if youre unsure about this particular book, stick with it, it just keeps getting better.

I dont know where BV gets his crazy story ideas, but this one is just awesome. Never will you be unsure who is the bad guy and who isnt. We are here, and we are going to eat everyone.

Mech 1 has some aliens that you hope does not exsist in the Universe! There worse the "Possleen from the Legace of the Aldenata" Over all it's a good listen. It makes you think! Well I'm off to Mech2 I'll let you know.

This story was below the level I've come to expect from B.V. Larson.

The constant switching between the many different characters; I was not able to make a connection with any of them.

nothing

focus on a smaller number of characters.

For some reason this is the first of Mr Larsons books I havent instantly taken a liking to. It seems a bit confused to me in places maybe it was just something with me. I think it was a little light in explanation of events?? I dont know about this one....