Cast Under an Alien Sun

Destiny's Crucible, Book 1

By: Olan Thorensen

Narrated by: Jonathan Davis

Length: 15 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

What if you were thrown into a foreign society, never to see home again? What would you do, and could you survive?

Joe Colsco boarded a flight from San Francisco to Chicago to attend a national chemistry meeting. He would never set foot on Earth again.

On planet Anyar, Joe is found unconscious on a beach of a large island inhabited by humans where the level of technology is similar to Earth circa 1700. He awakes amid strangers speaking an unintelligible language and struggles to accept losing his previous life and finding a place in a society with different customs, needing a way to support himself and not knowing a single soul. His worry about finding a place is assuaged when he finds ways to apply his knowledge of chemistry - as long as he is circumspect in introducing new knowledge not too far in advance of the planet's technology and being labelled a demon.

As he adjusts, Joe finds that he has be dropped into a developing clash between the people who cared for him, and for whom he develops an affinity, and a military power from elsewhere on the planet - a power with designs on conquest. Unaware, Joseph Colsco has been poured into a crucible where time and trials will transform him in ways he could never have imagined.

Cast Under an Alien Sun is a story that's science fiction in premise, adventure in execution - a cross-genre adventure with elements of science fiction, history, hard science, epic fantasy, time travel, romance, alien contact, and space colonization.

©2016 Olan Thorensen (P)2017 Podium Publishing

Great story.

I love time travel. This is a nice twist - adding alien beings. Great narrator.

Interesting

When I first started listening to this book I had a bad gut feeling I wasn't going to like it and almost turned it off, but then it got interesting and I've already purchased the second book.

Excellent

Excellent start to a great series. Plenty of action, back story & character development perfectly balanced to keep you wanting more. The pace & narration are outstanding throughout this excellent audiobook.

Fat-Finger Confession

Where does Cast Under an Alien Sun rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It’s like this: I mainly listen to audio books on my smart-phone; likely, many people do; and I never finish one if it’s not at least a 3 Star. So when the book is finished, I get this dialog page that ask me to rate it. If it’s barley worth the purchase, I give it a 3 Star. Some-one did succeed in getting it published and successfully consume 8 to 12 hour of my time; how bad could it be? But, I have to confess, that that are many titles that I don’t feel merit a 5 Star rating that I submit as a 5 Star rating because my finger is too big to resolve the pixels that indicate a 4 Star rating; and, since I don’t want to give a good book a 3 Star rating, I go ahead and submit a 5 Star rating.
Not only do I give this book a 5 Star rating, it was good enough to influence me in to re-rating the all the titles I’ve heard for the last 3 months.
I apologize for my past dissembling, but maybe Audible should consider redesigning the smart phone ratings page.

An enjoyable "fish out of water" story.

The plot seems to predictable. A lot like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Well worth the credit.

Story drew me in slowly

I really enjoyed this story and I'm glad I read the positive reviews and purchased the book. I appreciate creative skill and this story is beautiful, well written and expertly narrated. After an initial shock the tale slowly builds in a very natural way as you follow the main character and his integration into his new life. After a while you realize, as he does, that you've come to love the people and the places he finds. There is a lot of background exposition in this first book to introduce you to the new world. I admit that I drifted at times during some long monologues. However, the story proceeds apace and it's easy to understand and follow the events as they unfold. This book is a great find and I'm looking forward to reading the next ones in the series.

Fantastic!!!

Would you listen to Cast Under an Alien Sun again? Why?

Indeed I would... there a few story lines going on and each has it's own interesting plot

What about Jonathan Davis’s performance did you like?

Jonathan Davis is on par with Jim Dale... he has individual voices for each character and isnt a monotone drone reading a book!

A unique tale - despite clichés.

The plot of this book involves a person being abducted by aliens and sent to another world with humans on it, which is more primitive than ours. It obviously owes much to Barsoom for that, as well as oh so many other stories.

Where this series stands out, though, is that it uses this as an excuse not to engage in swashbuckling adventure, but in nerdy fantasies about chemistry and military tactics. It is something that would never have been published in traditional publishing because of that, as it's dry and very detailed. It's wonderful. It's by a huge nerd, for huge nerds, clearly.

There are minor bits of amateurishness to the writing that I don't enjoy, such as all the foreshadowing being... heavy-handed isn't a strong enough term. The foreshadowing is... like being beaten to the core of the earth by the hand of God. He just outright says things like, "Neither of them realized how accurate their fears would prove to be..." Not a direct quote, but that and things like it are relatively common and cause eyerolls.

The only not-minor issue I have with the story is that the author's writing seems to be more than a bit lacking when it comes to female sexuality - and, actually, sexuality in general. His female characters are good. Three-dimensional and well-written. But when it comes to the sex scenes... ew. So much ew. They're passionless and uncomfortable, and the protagonist is clearly just awful in bed. A potential excuse that this is a sexually repressed society is not valid, as it's... not. It's very open sexually. They discuss sex openly and have no "no sex until marriage" prohibitions.

One could also claim that the story is very much wish fulfillment, that Yozef is a bit of a Mary Sue, and that the pacing is poor. These are accurate and valid, but not negatives to me. I enjoy the exploration of a daydream I've had - "What if I were alive in the past? How would my knowledge help me?", I don't mind Yozef's great competence at all, as it's entirely justified, and I downright love the way it abandons traditional narrative structure. It makes it unique and interesting.

Now, the narration: Jonathan Lewis, the narrator, is good, but his female voice (singular, as he really only has one, accents aside) is... not the worst I've heard, but not great, especially when characters get emotional. Some of his accents get muddled and mixed up. Sometimes he does the wrong voice for who's speaking. In addition, his pronunciation has the occasional issue. For example: the main character is named Joseph. The people of the new world can't pronounce the 'J' sound so he becomes Yozef. Meanwhile, there's a character named Gynfor Moreland (which I may be misspelling slightly, as I only physically read the book once, ages ago). If the islanders don't have a 'J' sound, his name clearly needs to be pronounced with a 'G' sound. It is not; it's pronounced with a 'J' sound. This irks me greatly. He also can't drop his h's in a rural English-style accent well; it sounds very forced and he shouldn't attempt it. His "foreigner" accent is also just... one accent, even from foreigners from totally different Empires and continents (though this won't become apparent until later books). There are a few other nitpicks like that, but they don't ruin one's immersion very much. And all in all, the narration remains very immersive and natural-feeling.

It's a great series, telling a tale that's a bit clichéd and very amateurish, but in such a fresh way that even one who tends to hate the "stranger in a strange land" trope such as me can be thoroughly won over.

great read

couldnt stop listening to it. i was riveted to my headphones for hours. i like the concept of humans being transplanted in our early history.

Refreshing twist on an old tale...

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, knowing their tastes. It held my attention quite nicely. It was kind of slow, but I like it that way. It was a tale to be savored slowly.

What other book might you compare Cast Under an Alien Sun to and why?

Rebecca Orr wrote a series that is quite similar, a human castaway among aliens. I would like to hear those read, but they didn't seem to have been very popular. Sigh...

Which scene was your favorite?

Given that I consider this a thinking person's book - a bit more cerebral than most - the interview with the monk/friar/priest was most notable. There were many bits here and there that made me pause to ponder...

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Not at all. I wanted to stretch it out, and that it was a long book made it all the more enjoyable.

Any additional comments?

I liked the character development; it gave a lot more humanity to the characters. And the narrator did a fine job relating the tale, not too over the top, not too dull and Not unctuous as some can be, but then he had a good tale to match.
So... where the heck is book two??? I'm waiting...