Archangel Down

Archangel Project, Book 1

By: C. Gockel

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

In the year 2432, humans think they are alone in the universe. They're wrong.

Commander Noa Sato plans a peaceful leave on her home planet, Luddeccea, but winds up interrogated and imprisoned for her involvement in the Archangel Project. A project she knows nothing about.

Professor James Sinclair wakes in the snow, not remembering the past 24 hours or knowing why he is being pursued. The only thing he knows is that he has to find Commander Sato, a woman he's never met.

A military officer from the colonies and a civilian from Old Earth, they couldn't have less in common. But they have to work together to save the lives of millions - and their own. Every step of the way they are haunted by the final words of a secret transmission: The archangel is down.

©2015 C. Gockel (P)2016 Podium Publishing

hysterics

warning: keep your volume low, the main character is hysterical and the narrator insists on screaming her lines...

A contract for a series, material for a book.

This book is a study in what happens when an author gets a contract for a series but only has material enough for a book. It drags, needlessly so. Also, we have a heroine that is supposed to be a highly trained officer in the galactic fleet. We're repeatedly told she is a hot shot pilot with vast combat experience, and a champion at hand to hand combat, but the woman can't seem to exercise any practical control of her emotions or do more than the most cursory strategic thinking, to the continuing detriment of the mission. The result is a wreck of a character you just can't care about. I doubt I'll read further from this author. I doubt I'll ever be bored enough to willingly subject myself to such concentrated banality.

Not worth the time

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

The primary character lacked focus and consistently survived her terrible planning failures.

What was most disappointing about C. Gockel’s story?

A lead character who did not hold my interest or concern

Slow start but stick with it

It is a good story but the start was a little slow. I do recommend it though and will get the next one. The narrator took a bit to get in the swing but does. Although "rout" is not pronounced "wrote".

Falls short

I was hoping that this will get better but alas. The premise of the story is potentially good (I say potentially because it didn’t get very far in the first book). But the characters are just plain awful. Their dialogue could have been written by the third grader. The repetitive hinting that the main character is not what he seems was tedious. The reading was overly dramatic.

Bad characterization and science

The main character is supposed to be the first officer of a starship. A pilot in the fleet of the galactic republic. She "brags" about doing tons of paperwork and being good at organization. Then she spends the whole book being incompetent and freaking out at the slightest trouble. It's insulting to our intelligence as readers and to military personnel.

On top of that, the author's understanding of time dilation is backward. She says repeatedly, then shows in the plot, time speeding up the closer you get to the speed of light. Time actually slows down the closer you get to light speed. She also ignores little things like inertia. Basically, this is not even a tiny bit realistic. It wouldn't annoy me this much if the characterization was better.

The narrator is good though.

Enjoyable tale

Any additional comments?

I really enjoyed this story and I was pleasantly surprised to read some ideas I thought were a nice new twist on alien contact. For the price I paid I was very pleased...check on Amazon for the kindle version and add Audible narration for a very nice price, at least at the present time. I liked it enough I am going to check out the next book in the series!

Great potential but seems undercooked

It had elements I really liked but the storytelling kept falling short.

There were too many times when I could not tell if a character was thinking or talking. I found myself backing up and playing sections over because I thought I missed something important. I didn't.

If you like continuous action with few breaks, you may like this book.

it starts small but the world it opens up to...

this is the first book in a wonderful universe created by Gockel that you won't want to miss diving into.

Ahhh! We’re all going to die!!!

I usually like the narrator, but this time something has gone terribly wrong. She’s voicing the main character as if Noa is both stupid and lacking in a sense of self-preservation. This is definitely a book to be read not listened to.

Wonderful

I enjoyed this in audio amazingly. I found the narrator excellent, she brought the story beautifully to life, and I discovered aspects of it that I had missed reading the book. I have been captivated by the entire series, and this is the first one I have bought as an audio book. It was well worth it, I can't wait to get listening to the next one. Highly reccomened

I am lost

I have seldom been so bored. I keep listening thinking it must get better soon, but it does not. It is slow, confused and really boring. A very bad buy on my part