Gibraltar Earth: Gibraltar Earth, Book 1

I bought this book on a whim, not really expecting much. To my pleasant surprise I enjoyed it thoroughly and I'm looking forward to Michael McCollum's next book.

I picked this up on a recommendation of Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte from Security Now.

It reminds me of a "superhero" film or story, where the first part of the story is the "gathering of the heroes" for the coming crisis. This portion of the story was a bit slow, and he almost lost me.

But when the assembled team ventures out into the galaxy to investigate stories they've been told of the "Broa Overlords", the story really takes off. There is a sense of mystery as the team seeks to answer some critical questions, and the tension builds. In a paperback, I often cheat and look ahead for spoilers, but with an audiobook, there's no good way to do that. But this book created suspense for me that really made me want to cheat.

The narrator is fantastic, and is able to suggest numerous characters with his voice. Overall a great read, and I'm plowing into part 2!

So first let me say that I have been waiting for this book to come to Audible and the others from the same author, I herd about it on Security Now with Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte from This Week in Tech over at TWiT.tv - Thanks Audible.com for your continued sponsorship of the TWiT network.

Now the review. This is sorta a review of all 3 books as you should read all of them but I will do individual reviews of them also.

The narrator is pretty good he just mispronounces words or pronounces them not as they should be by people who say them - like Toronto the "t" at the end is silent people say it like "Torono" but the narrator says the "t", many other words are like that also but its not that bad

This is a "First Contact" novel but not like any you have read before, without giving anything away that's not in the description I will say that Humans find out about a Race of Aliens that must control everything (sorta like the USA is now) and they don't know about the Humans so for now we are safe.

Humans find an Alien and go on an adventure to find out more about these evil Aliens that want to control everything.

This book goes into many of the things that would probably would be happening if we actually encountered Aliens like in this book, I think that the events play out pertty much how it would in real life but we can only wait and see when the Aliens come

The end of this book is nicely setup for what you expect in the next one and it flows nicely, this author is top notch and I am going on to reading the other 3 book series Antares Dawn next, the other one Life Probe the Makers books has a female narrator which I sometimes find problematic when they try to do male voices so I might not be able to listen to that one of The Sales of Tau Ceti but I will give it a chance.

This series of books is great but let me warn you the 3rd book ends nicely but you will want more and honestly i think there needs to be another book, I hope the author writes one or more.

Opening was counter intuitive - without spoilers - McCollum crafts a mix of strong characters, human and LGM - and leads us through quite a maze.

When Mr. McCollum demonstrates his trivial fallibility: he put an olive in a Manhattan! Heresy! A Manhattan is Bourbon, Sweet Vermouth, Bitters, and a twist of Orange peal and Cherry are optional garnishes. Olive, indeed!!!

First contact.

He has strong females - but his manipulative airheads could be toned down or, lost entirely.

Leo & Steve introduced me to this author - anybody knowing these geeks knows that they rarely lead us astray - Security Now! Listeners get great tips.

Something of the old tradition of Science fiction. Huge scope and a nice twist. As a book it did seem under developed, however it was still a tasty treat. Hopefully the next book will improve. This is a book to digest when you are between more serious books.