Trojan Colony

Hammond's Hardcases, Book 2

By: Jack Colrain

Narrated by: Andrew Tell

Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

The ends justify the means - except when humanity’s survival is on the line.

Earth’s landscape lies scorched by weapons fire after the most recent round of alien attacks. The technology the Mozari left behind has advanced scientific understanding at breakneck speeds, giving humanity the chance to fight back against their Gresian foes. Spaceworthy vessels and all-new weaponry are pumped out of orbiting factories, boarded by the brightest minds to begin colonizing new planets.

But humanity is still vulnerable.

Lieutenant Daniel West understands this, which is why his recruits are the most highly trained the military puts out - regardless of the physical and mental demand it takes to make them that way. Any soldier in the newly created Special Warfare Task Force must plan and prepare for every possible scenario.

After all, the return of the Gresians isn’t just inevitable. It’s imminent.

Now assigned to the United Earth Ship Shenzhen, Daniel is chosen to command a platoon to protect a team of elite colonists traveling to LTT-8270. But it isn’t until their arrival that the true mission becomes evident, and Daniel discovers an even more horrifying truth.

A truth that demands too high a cost for humanity’s future.

This novel contains violence and profanity.

©2019 Relay Publishing (P)2019 Relay Publishing

Continuing The Adventure

Since the last story Daniel West is training people just as harshly as Hammond did him to prep for the inevitable return of the Gresians as they attempt to finish their job. The stuff left by the Mozaris is also resulting in humanity's ability to build and increase our knowledge at breakneck speed creating weapons and ships with which to defend ourselves as well as colonize.

Anyways, at some point Daneil and his team of "Hardcases" end up on a mission which should be simple but there is a lot more than meets the eye (as with all things in this story) and it becomes a tense exciting story where they attempt to survive in the middle of space they still don't fully understand.

I think it's a little less good than the prior story in the series but still an entertaining science fiction story with a number of exciting moments and still has me excited to continue the series.

I received the review code for this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this honest review.

Filler, Filler, Filler

Lots of rambling in areas that did not advance the storyline and then not enough details in areas that needed it.

Good story if you can get past the dialogue.

I like the story but I could not get past the weird up and down cadence of the narrator.

Almost amazing.

If it weren't for the narrator consistently mispronouncing a certain character's name (In the second book!) I'd have rated this higher.

insert bad rap hereppp]⁰

insert bad rant here
good concepts but he kept them to himself
I mean the drones

Sophomore Slump

Trojan Colony starts out slow, but the second half has lots of action. The story was interesting with some good ideas, but the characters were flat. Hopefully everything will come together in the third installment. At least the narration was excellent.

B movie scifi

This book started of ok, but the contrived reasoning behind the decisions were poorly thought out. Most of the tension in this book could/would have been solved by preplanning so simple and obvious that it really leaves the reader confused and asking why. There were attempts to fix this later in the book but it was a poor attempt. this series had a lot of potential and I am really sad to see it go down this path.

Maybe it's Burnout

Maybe I need a change. It seems the last few books I've listed to are - poor. Few redeeming qualities. In the case of Trojan Colony, even the ending was agonizing.

I won't give a long, drawn out explanation of why this didn't work for me. The only thing I could think of throughout the whole book was that the max age of the most senior character (some General or another) is 17 years old and all other characters are younger. The LT and the Professor would be about 13 years old I'd guess.

My biggest complaint is that this character maturity shift seems to have become the norm. And that's probably an admission that I've become jaded.

I hate writing negative reviews. I have much respect for the authors and the narrators that put together all these hours of entertainment. But, when you read this book, did you find that the conversations, internal thinking, situations, or responses were that of adults or kids?

And it ends with the typical ignorant threat of extortion and new mission. Not a single meaningful conversation.