The Socket Greeny Saga

Socket Greeny, Book 1-3

De: Tony Bertauski

Narrado por: Tony Bertauski

One of IndieReader's BEST BOOKS of 2014!

The entire Socket Greeny trilogy (Discovery, Training, and Legend) follows a white-haired teenager that discovers he's part of an evolved human race, how he trains to understand his true self, and the legendary conclusion of his true nature.

DISCOVERY

Work has always come first for Socket Greeny's mother, ever since his father died. But when she shows him the inner workings of the Paladin Nation, he discovers why.

Paladins traverse the planet through wormholes to keep the world safe, but from what, they won't say. Although his parents were not actually one of them, Socket is different. He soon finds himself in the center of controversy and betrayal when he's anointed the Paladin Nation's prodigy. He didn't ask for the "blessing" of psychic powers and the ability to timeslice, and he doesn't want to be responsible for the world. He just wants to go home and back to school and be normal again.

But, sometimes, life doesn't give us that privilege, his mother tells him.

And when the world is soon threatened and the Paladins are forced into the public eye, Socket discovers what his mother means. If he doesn't embrace his true nature, life as we know it will change forever.

TRAINING

A year has passed since the Paladin Nation was exposed to the public. Their mission is still to protect humanity from whatever may threaten them. Previously, it was the human duplications, but now that they've been extinguished their biggest challenge is dealing with the complications of public image. Socket Greeny, now 17 years old, has been a Paladin cadet for the past year and is nearing the final test. But that's the least of his problems. He's trying to live two lives: one as a superhero while hanging onto his normal life.

While fearlessly dealing with his masochistic trainer, he's trying to salvage his deteriorating relationship with his girlfriend back home.

©2013 Tony Bertauski (P)2015 Tony Bertauski

Great series

This is a great trilogy at a great price. I really enjoyed the story. I very much recommend this trilogy. The only complaint I have is with the narration. Tony Bertauski has a good voice for narration, but there were a few little annoyances there. The sound level faded every now and then. Also, and this is very minor, but it did bug me that he pronounced the word "escape" as "Ex-scape". I guess that comes from having school teachers who scolded me for those types of things. The best narrators use different voices, accents, etc. and the listener forgets that it is just a single person narrating the story. While he does this on occasion with certain characters, he is not consistent. Still, as I said, he's got a good voice for narration so it wasn't a bad experience. The story was interesting enough to overcome these minor shortfalls in narration.

All in all, I thought the story was very good. I'll definitely be looking for other works by Tony Bertauski.

-JC

An interesting concept, not the best execution

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

The premise was interesting, and I like stories with psychic abilities. That being said, this was a rather dry story with monotone narration by the author. He didn't do much by way of unique voices and the sound quality wasn't the greatest.

An exceptional sci-fi/tech trilogy

This was one of the best sci-fi/tech audiobooks I've heard lately, and frankly I can't believe it's still relatively undiscovered. The Socket Greeny trilogy is no slow starter. It hits the ground running from page one and never lets up. Socket Greeny is a disaffected, tech-savvy 16-year-old outsider, who, along with his friends Streeter and Shoot, frequently ventures into an internet virtual mode. Accessible via a small wearable transmitting device, anyone with the right gear and skill can enter a moldable world of virtual reality, which Socket and his friends often do while in school (because their high school has the most powerful gateway in the area). But on one particular day when the trio enters virtual mode, something strange happens, and their lives become forever changed.

I was genuinely impressed by author Tony Bertauski's writing skill (spectacular balancing of story elements), his imagination (Spindle, the preserve, the grimmits), and foremost his ability to describe with astounding, well-proportioned detail the environments, events, and emotions experienced by the characters. This trilogy could easily become a movie or TV show, and I fervently hope that soon it will become one!

In some cases, I've found that when an author narrates their own material, it can sometimes be at a disservice to the story or performance, but this is certainly NOT the case here. Bertauski masterfully narrates each installment, and he accomplishes the feat with marvelous results. I caught only a few mispronounced words (eg. ethereal; YIN and yang), but in no way did they detract from my understanding of the context or decrease my overall enjoyment.

Despite its teen/young adult genre categorization, I believe adults will, like me, find a lot to love about the Socket Greeny saga. Going beyond mere entertainment, it was a full-on head rush of mental escapism. It was simply a pleasure to listen to! I'm looking forward to more from this author because he has so much to offer his readers and listeners.

I was provided a free copy of this audiobook by the author in exchange for my unbiased review. Many thanks for the opportunity!

Bertauski Rules!

Long and delicious! The story of Socket is magnificent and Mr. Bertauski brings it to life.

Absolutely one of my favorite book series.

Quite simply, I loved this story. At first I didn't care for the narrator's lack of distinguishable character voices but it did seem to improve as it went along or maybe I was finally able to distinguish the subtle voice differences. Other than that, the storyline and characters along with the many twists, kept me fully engaged and enthralled. There are some times when you may get confused but keep listening and it will begin to make sense. I wouldn't change anything. I only wish there was another spin-off story.