The Intrepid

Dawn of the Interstellar Age

De: Arnie Benn

Narrado por: A. J. Shuck

Humanity's first voyage to another star was supposed to answer one of our oldest questions.

Instead, it found a new one.

Thirty years after the last war, humanity has entered an extraordinary new age — one of abundant energy, settlements on the Moon and Mars, and, at last, the ability to reach another star.

An international crew of exceptional — and remarkably human — men and women sets out to explore the nearest potentially habitable world beyond our Sun.

What they discover there shouldn't be possible.

And no two people seem to agree on what it means.

Four light-years from Earth, beyond the reach of real-time help, a mystery becomes a disagreement, the disagreement becomes a crisis, and the crews find themselves confronting something no mission could have prepared them for: not merely the unknown, but each other.

Because humanity may have crossed the stars, but it has brought everything with it—curiosity and courage, loyalty and love, ambition and fear, and the ancient instincts that have shaped our history.

The Intrepid: Dawn Of The Interstellar Age is a character-driven science-fiction adventure blending mystery, suspense, exploration, romance, and rigorously grounded science into a story about the greatest frontier of all: what humanity might become.

Winner, Literary Titan Book Award (2023)

Gold Medal, FAPA President's Book Award (2023)

"A stellar ensemble cast… action, adventure, suspense, mystery, and a touch of romance. There is something for everyone." — Reedsy Discovery

©2023 Arnold Benn (P)2026 Arnold Benn

Tedious

Character development is terrible. Not an IQ over 90 in the bunch. Insubordination rules the day. The ending was so painful I thought I'd rather be at the dentist.

Great plot

Excellent novel. The two chapters where Cardinal goes back in time to teaching his classes were a waste and should be deleted but otherwise great story.

meh story and narration

narration was subpar. story was lacking the hook to really get the listener (me) completely into the book. I was waiting for the drastic turn that brought action and drama that never came.

This Might Have Made a Good Short Story

The first quarter of the book is exposition. it describes in boring detail all of the crew members. Later the first crew is joined by other ships and other crews. The finally get to an exo planet and find a museum of earth ancient and new weapons in a museum on this planet. The conclude that it from an advanced race and must be destroyed. They conclude this because they feel that the advance race has been monitoring earth for centuries. For this reason the earthlings must destroy the archive museum. The book then goes back to when one of the ship commanders was a teaching professor. This goes into the history of recent wars on earth. This has little to do with the main story. The conflict that arises in that some of the earthlings don't argree with the idea of destroying the archive museum. This is the major conflict in the entire book. It is a good plot for a short story. What a waste of time.

Naive, tedious, with unlikable characters.

Characters were simplistic and almost stereotypical. They are supposed to be the best but don’t seem to be able to even follow simple procedures, thus putting themselves and others in danger. They are either militaristic reactionaries who need to blow everything up or naive do-gooders who believe the universe is going to be full of wise and good aliens (the reason being that if they are so advanced, they must’ve done away with war and violence. Where that comes from I have no idea.). I finally gave up when both sides started making decisions that were so absurd that it stretched even my imagination.