Living Starship 1

The Last Symbiotes, Book 1

De: Dante King

Narrado por: Heather Stonewell, Wayne Kelly

Captain James Decker has lived a life of hunting, killing, and earning credits.

To some, it hasn’t amounted to much, but to him, it’s led to him captaining the SC Fortune, a space cruiser with a competent crew that he’s grown fond of.

After accepting a bounty hunting mission with a beautiful blonde woman as the mark, Decker finds himself soon without a ship and a crew. But as luck would have it, this same mission gives him back what he lost: a new ship and a new crew.

This ship is composed of what seems like organic material, and the sole crew member he finds on board is the same beautiful blonde whose bounty he took.

Turns out that this woman is what is known to very few as a symbiote, and she’s one of the last ones left. She has a mission for Decker: seek out her sisters and bring them all together. While not a typical mission for Decker, the symbiote’s request, should he honor it, will lead to more credits than any planet president, let alone bounty hunter, has laid eyes on.

It’ll mean becoming captain of a new ship, a living starship, and seeking out the last symbiotes all the way to the cosmic horizon.

This book contains unconventional relationships.

©2022 Dante King (P)2023 Podium Audio

Brilliant Story with Steamy Elements

Love love love the narrators, both of them. as the title says, I loved the story. A great space-opera with harem elements and spicy scenes... What more can a guy ask for?

Looks like I'm going to be loving this series.

Well, this is a small case of "Don't have expectations."
Not that this book isn't great... It's just that I expected something a bit less serious and more playful.
After I got over the initial disappointment, I got into the story and love it.
Can't wait to get into book 2.
Captain of a ship of bounty hunters, our MC, Decker, is going to save the species of symbiotes.
Of course he needs to connect with them, in order to "connect" with them, if you catch my drift. 😉
I'm giving this book 7.5 out of 5 stars.

One of the authors better books

I have written many books by Dante King. This is definitely one of the better ones. I enjoyed the strip description for each of the characters the action was good, but not overwhelming, and you could easily route for MC
The narrator’s were also excellent, and brought real emotion to the characters

A possibly good story

I can tell that the story would be great, but this audiobook has a major drawback that is preventing it from having its greatness. The MMCs voice. The VA is trying his best to have a gravelly world weary tone to the main character's voice but it comes out in such a way that it is mentally exhausting to listen to. I had to stop listening to this at work because I was falling asleep listening to him talk.

Even the spicy scenes were lackluster because of his voice. I actually believe that this would have benefited from not having them and having a different form of "Bonding" with the symbiotes. The intimacy would have been better as a byproduct of the bond forming an emotional attachment through the books progression

ok but not running for book 2

I love a good spicey sci fi novel. This was not it, and I might say that the male voice talent perhaps was a big part of it. His attempts at the gravelly, grizzled voice fell flat to me. To the point I was making an effort to tune him out.

Narration and internal monolog !!

the MC voice is crap! who said, "Oh yeah, this voice is good"? he should have just used his regular narrator voice. it's obvious that he is struggling to maintain a deep, raspy tone. which, by the way, makes the MC sound old man passed his prime. the inner monolog is excessive to the point I skip past it. probably could have cut 2 hours out of the story. the intimate scenes are short, not very creative, and the MC is a one & done kinda guy.

Wayne kinda ruined it

It sounded like Wayne chose a voice for Dekker that he couldn't maintain. So, Dekker's voice ended up fluctuating all over the place with no real consistency. It made the dialog kind of hard to follow at times and somewhat ruined the immersion of the performance.

Unique take

This is a unique take on the idea of a living ship. Not sure where the author came up with the concept but it works in the story arc

Impressive

love the story only thing is probally add 2 more voice actors to give it better range but otherwise impressive

Long Winded

First, the good:
- The overall concept is interesting.
- The author has a VERY descriptive writing style which can be good in some situations.
- The narrator did a decent job.

Second, the bad:
- I did not realize it was a harem book when I selected it. I'm not anti-harem stories when done well, but the erotic parts were more like someone doing a technical writeup on what was happening in a low-budget porn movie.
- I'm all for being descriptive in literature, but sometimes less is more. This author in this book tended to be overly descriptive leaving no room for imagination. Descriptive writing is very important, but if you describe every thought, action, and concept excessively for every statement, it becomes mind numbing.
- The character's conversations were very awkward. I think this may be because of the wordiness.
- The author seemed to have a wish list of things to fit in the story and was shoving them in whether it benefited the story or not.

Overall, I did not find this story to be entertaining and won't continue with the series.