The Mistress of Space-Time

The Stasis Stories, #7

De: Laurence Dahners

Narrado por: Lee Goettl

This hard sci-fi novel is the seventh book in the Stasis Stories series of optimistic tales of technological innovation in the near future. This one is about Kaem Seba’s daughter, Zaii, a young woman who, like her father, has extraordinary math talents.

Eager to do her part in the war against the aliens from Epsilon Eridani, she becomes a Space Force ROTC cadet. Soon after that, she’s proving to be a superb young officer. However, as she studies potential warfighting strategies that might be used against the Eridanis, she realizes that the defenders of Sol system have a problem.

The humans won the first battle against the Eridanis by using the technical advantage afforded by the invulnerability of stasis. But the Eridanis jump and biowarfare technology could easily allow them to wipe out the human race on Earth and thus win the war.

Offered the opportunity, she sets out to study the wreckage of the Eridani ships from the first battle. She hopes to figure out how jump works, thus appropriating that technology for human use and evening the playing field. Can she figure this out in time to keep the Eridanis from exterminating homo sapiens? It turns out to be a lot harder than she’d hoped and to require help from someone she tries to avoid asking.

©2021 Laurence E Dahners (P)2022 Laurence E Dahners

Captivating!

The story is interesting and flows better than the previous one did. The story still jumps a little more than I'd like. Overall, while it is a good story, it is hard to abandon Kaem as the main character. I would have loved for him to play a bigger role.

Best hard science fiction series since the golden age

I was a bit disappointed by the ultimate danger to of all of the human race as a sub plot in the last two books even though the resolution in the final book was very satisfying I have been waiting 5 years for the next entry In this series.

Great story

A well written story line from start to finish with an ending to strive for.

Great story full of convincing possibilities

Why do we read/listen to science fiction novels? To join the author’s imaginative journey through invention, space and even time. The author wove the technical aspects into the story effortlessly. I very much enjoyed this story.

Enders Game, anyone?

Reminded me of enders Game, in a good way. we have a new genius taking the story further. Very fun. They're lucky enough to meet the galaxy's dumbest aliens, but sometimes you get lucky I suppose.

Ready for the next book!

The whole series it's just a lot of fun, and a lot of tech. It's very interesting, and some very different takes on strategies. It kept me listening at every opportunity.

that cebas daughter is as or even smarter than him

well I think it's just way to unrealistic in that if not ceba his daughter are so smart that they don't need anyone and I get the impression that a person like that would be the most humble. I don't know I mean the story is great and I'm glad ceba and his daughter are on the good side but then if they were bad. fun but no real danger but it is the kinda of world I wish we had

letdown to end possibly the best hard Sci-Fi series about time I've ever read

The first five books of this series were astounding. HARD sci-fi with enough explanation of the "fiction" part of the science to make me wonder how many people got tire of the repeated and continuing evolution of explanations of the tech, its uses, etc. I loved all of that discovery in the first five books.

The first five books also had the same narrator, so as the listener, you got used to what every character sounded like and there was a great voice range to distinguish them.

The narrator for book 6 changed, and it was a BAD change. It felt at times like a bored Science professor reading a science text by rote for a educational-text-on-audio series. The narration made the book fall flat, and his voice range was boring. The main protagonist of the first 5 books was barely a factor in the new book, but where he was present was important to the story development, and you never got a feel for him or other characters in the new book because the new narrator just couldn't bring them to life. All of that narration problem caused the book's move away from new discoveries about the stasis "material" as the primary topic of the narrative to be hard to follow and less interesting.

New Narrator in book seven was just as bad, but the story felt "phoned-in" as if the author was tired of the story and just wanted it to end. He didn't give as much passionate treatement to the development of "jump travel" (sort of like a wormhole jump) based on the theories and technology the protagonist of the first 5 books built his stasis material on. That protagonist's daughter was the focus of book 6 and book 7, so it could be argued that the focus was on her, and therefore the narrator change was intentional to support that shift in focus. It just didn't work, at least for me. Books six and seven were as amazing a story as books 1-5 were, but the deep engineering and scientific discussions and development just didn't happen.

As stand-alone books, or even a 2-book series, I would probably rate books 6 and 7 as solid 4.5 or higher out of 5 stars. However, as a culmination of the series that started with book 1, I hated them, and especially how "phoned-in" book 7 seems, and how badly the change in narrator affects the treatment of the characters from books 1-5. Book 7 turns probably the best time "travel" story I've ever read into an above average hard scifi series.

Dahners could have done so much more in books 6-7 to explain the aliens' biological differentiation and specialization. In books 1-5 he would have gone into great detail as to why and how a biological Computer varient of the species came to be and how that prevented any need for the development of technological computing devices using microchips. BUT... not addressing topics like that about the aliens made it easier to consolidate this story into just two books (6-7 of the series).

The author does close the book on the story quite well, better than a lot of sci-fi authors that just stop writing and lay the pen down without closure on "what-ifs" and "wait what about that detail" issues. I truly appreciate it when an author gives a good ending that closes pretty much every intentionally written loophole, and I thank him for that. but.... it just feels like the book as a whole is a disservice to the sheer magnitude of storytelling and science development in the earlier 5 books where the stasis technology was the primary focus.

I wish I could rate this above a 4.5.