Citadel

The Palladium Wars, Book 3

By: Marko Kloos

Narrated by: Korey Jackson

Length: 10 hrs and 37 mins

Publisher's Summary

An interplanetary battle is renewed in an epic novel of a warring solar system by the author of Ballistic.

The war should have been over. But it’s not for a group of nationalists grabbing for control. 

It’s been two weeks since a missile with a nuclear warhead tore through the planetary defenses in the most blistering large-scale attack ever committed in the history of the Gaia system. Commander Dunstan Park of the Rhodian navy has been handpicked to command an experimental cruiser that could dictate the course of the escalating conflict. All he has to do is keep the ship from falling into the wrong hands. 

On Gretia, the powder keg is beyond control. A terrorist attack against civilians draws Idina Chaudhary into a costly battle. It also forces a cautious Aden Jansen back into the fray. Now dedicated to a just cause, he’s still keeping his past hidden. The risk of exposing his former alliance could twist not only his fate but also that of his sister, Solveig, heir to the family empire. 

With no time to waste, Dunstan hits the ground running. But as insurgents threaten the unstable peace, what’s ahead for both sides could change the destiny of the Gaia system forever.

©2021 by Marko Kloos. (P)2021 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic Reviews

“A series you should start if you are a fan of grounded space opera with a military lean. The Palladium Wars comes at straight-up military fiction from an angle that keeps it interesting.” (Locus Magazine)

Find a narrator and stick with it.

Update 08/28/21

The reason why I gave this book one star is 100% because of the reader. I very specifically call him a reader not a narrator. His performance is absolutely horrible and flat. For a series that has such heavy inflections and important of how people speak the fact that they chose him for narration... sorry reading this book is absolutely mind boggling. It absolutely killed the listening experience for me. I had to read the book I could not force myself to listen to the rest of it after trying for over an hour. The readers way of pronouncing some of the main planetary names in a completely different manner than what was already done up to this point was utterly jarring. The story itself was absolutely magnificent. However the fact that they let this get through in this condition is completely unacceptable. Buy the book skip the audiobook. The audio experience is hot garbage and that's me being nice.


So here we are at book three, with three different audio narrators. Personally you guys were stupid to not pay Luke his money. I understand that life happens. That there are things that we don't know. However to have three different narrators in three different books in the same series is a failure. Get your stuff together. F.Y.I I have not listened to all of the book yet. I just started and went W.T.F. a different narrator again. We will see how it plays out.

Still a great series!

A 3rd new narrator for the series isn't great, but also the last narrator Angelo passed away. Seems wrong and petty to give 1 star reviews when its no ones fault.....

New narrator still does a great job

Keeps you wanting more

I think Korey is a good fit and replacement for the late Angelo. Keep the books coming

Wrong narrator.

I miss the narrator from the previous books. While the person doing it now is quite talented, I just don’t believe him. Frankly, his voice and delivery takes me out of the story and I find it harder to not drift off and daydream.

I’m seriously considering just reading the book instead. Maybe he will win me over further in but as of now, it’s just not happening.

Narration leaves the story flat

The story isn’t that bad, it’s a popcorn listen though. Once again not having Luke Daniels narrate was a bad decision, even if he wasn’t available. The current narrator was an improvement though on the lay guy. But the lack of phenomenal narration really lays out kloos’s faults as a writer, mainly that the dialogue is clunky as all get out

Solid story, but new narration falls flat

Good story line, with some depth of all four story lines.
The bad: Luke Daniels had done a tremendous job with narrating all of Marko Kloos’ works, both Frontlines and now the Palladium Wars. The new narrator, Korey Jackson, has good emotional inflections but all the characters just sort of blend together in both tone and accents—well, lack of accents. It brings down the world that had been built by the Daniels/Kloos mix.

Changed narrators, again!

It's almost as if the publishers don't want people to like this series. Imagine, if you will, a TV series in which every episode has a completely different cast playing the same characters. It only works on Doctor Who because it is only one character and integral to the plot. This is pointless and arbitrary. The narrators are becoming progressively worse. This one only does the one African-American accent (slightly higher for females) for all characters even when a different accent or vocalisation is explicitly called for.

Narrator has two character voices,

Come on, only 2? And they can't do accents. Such a good book performed awfully. Can we please get this reworked with one of the previous narrators or some one that can do more than two characters. You have to read the book or re-listen to the same scene several times if the scene has multiple characters in it. At least I was able to spend more on an author I like by having to buy the book in addition.

Narration killed it for me

I'm still working my way through the story, but it's become a chore instead of entertainment. The new narrator does fine with different characters' voices, but he's also unenthusiastic and unemotional. It's not holding my interest and I'm often having to restart the chapter. Also, no one else has mentioned it, so maybe it's just me, but the narrator will speak at normal volume and then drop the volume significantly for characters' internal thoughts, and some characters are very soft spoken. so I'll have to rewind a bit, crank up the volume, and then turn it back down when he goes back to his normal speaking volume. It sounds like this book should have been ran through Audacity's compressor.

Edit: I finished the book, and I'll give my final review here. I get that life happens and narrators have to change mid-series. This new narrator isn't great though, and there are different characters that have the same or similar voices. My complaint above about the volume issue still stands, however, it is mostly when using headphones. It wasn't as bad when using speakers, so your mileage my vary. The story itself is pretty good, but I'll be reading instead of listening to any future books in the series.

Must-Read, Maybe Not Must-Listen

This book was excellent - I couldn't put it down, even with the jarring narrator transition. If you've started the series, you owe it to yourself to read this book. Just...maybe not to listen to it.

It's been a series of unfortunate events for Marko Kloos with narrators and I'm always willing to give the author the benefit of the doubt, as they care way more about this title than I ever will, so I know these transitions are probably more painful on their end. That said, while I did get used to Jackson's narration after the first hour or so and the story more than pulled me through the rough patches, he lacked the variations in character voices and cadence that made the books come alive with the last two narrators.

Overall the story was great - lots of plot development and a few twists along the way. And the narration isn't bad either, just not great. If you prefer the audiobook format it's still worth a listen, but if you're fine with reading it yourself you may want to go that route this time around if you don't like the audio sample.

Disappointing

I love the Frontlines series, they are great. This is the third book in this series, so I’ve listened to close to 30 hours of audiobooks and maybe five things has happened. There’s just too much exposition and 4 main characters thinking this and that. I would have endured to the end and hoped for a better next installment but the narrator put me off, unfortunately. All characters have the same voice and emote the same so it is difficult to keep track. The narrator is voice is clear but too slow and pronounced, it felt like I was listening to an English speaking exercise. I returned it half way through.

Great story, terrible narrator

There is another narrator who just doesn't bring the story out at all, which is a shame because the story is fantastic as usual! He doesn't do accents, and his female voice is very ridiculous, almost like there's a joke that we don't understand.

Haven't finished the audiobook yet, will update.
But please never use this narrator ever again, he doesn't fit any of the characters at all, and has absolutely no emotional range.

Third time not so lucky!!

Ok so the story is really great if I'm honest, but what's not is the fact that this is yet again a different narrator!! But you know the old adage and who doesn't, "Third Times The Charm!!" Trust me that in this case it really isn't!! Why couldn't they have stuck with Luke Daniels, narrator for Aftershock book one, whose narration was pretty good with plenty of variations to the different characters!! Or Angelo Do Loreto, narrator for Ballistic book two, who again had plenty of variations, but kinda fell short, but that was due to the fact you'd gotten used to Luke, he did keep with the accents though for each character!! But this isn't about either of them, this is about Korey!!
Korey Jackson, while having a lovely voice and it truly is lovely, really has only one range for ALL the character's!! You wouldn't know if the character was supposed to be male or female, unless you already know what sex that character is of If after speaking of says, he or she!! I mean why would you not only change from the original narrator to begin with; with some one else, to then change it a third time....who will the narrator be for book four!?!?!?!? Should we start making bets now or should we hope that at the very least they'll get a narrator who learns by listening to the first book and has a good range to at least be able to do what Angelo did and that is to ensure all the main characters or those from different planets all have the original accents again??? Well we can only hope, but right now it's not something I'll be holding my breath for!! Why don't authors just do what the main percentage does and actually stick with just the one narrator!!! Personally it's not that hard really to make sure that a narrator has range within their portfolio!! For me, Korey Jackson fell so short he missed the launch pad!!
But this is my opinion and others may or may not agree with that, but that's what makes the world go round is our differing unbiased opinions!! I really think it's a terrible shame, cos the book itself, like I said all the way up ^^^^^ there, is really great and this isn't a genre I've ever been interested in before!!! I'm really glad that I took a chance on Aftershock now!!
Fly safe out there ;)

Sorry just an add on....this is the end??? Wtf?? Seriously?? There's no conclusion To this story at all!!!! Okay I've got to knock stars off just for this reason alone!!!!

Great story, poor performance

Really enjoyed the next part of the story but the performance was a big let down with the Same male and female accents for all the characters. It really took away from the drama of the story.

Preferred the other narrator

I preferred the other narrator they shouldn’t have changed him Stories right enough though can’t wait for next one

A dang shame.

I had been looking forward to this book sooo much since as I loved the two former books in the serie... But since this one was released I have been struggling to listen to it.. The new Narrated are just AWFUL. He mispronorses so many words and his female character voice are just offensive.. Making all of them sound like Tenage girls from a 90's sitcom. I am sorely tempted to return this book as I doubt I will ever get to complet it.

really enjoyed this chapter

as with frontlines this is turning into a great story. looking forward to the next one!

narrator not really bad but not good either

all the characters are narrated in the same voice with no attempt at differentiation

Story is good, too many characters for 10h perbook

[Spoilers throughout] The story is interesting but out of the 10 hours you end up with very slow progression in the story, and still three books in we are none the wiser as to why or how the grecians are fighting back. We are also expected to believe that a grecian side more experienced in warfare lose battle after battle with underwhelming tech, dispite in book one having superior cloaking tech. No explanation of why they attacked to begin with or any viewpoints from the enemy side other than when they turn up to lose a fight...

It's clear to me this author prefers to draw a slow story out with what he assumes to be witty banter that are in fact more like dad jokes over close to a dozen books just to make money rather than making a series of consistent quality... It's a shame showed promise in books one and two now it's stagnating and defies logic at times.

Also they went the route of having more entertaining characters than believable ones and making decisions in high adrenaline/stressful moments based on how each decision would be perceived by the average reader rather than accepting in times like these it's fight or flight having whole conversations in your head amidst a highly trained assassin trying to kill you may be considered the norm for entertainment nowadays but it's ridiculous, entertaining yes but not believable.

In the whole space fleet some old guy is the best person to put in charge of a ship, yet he has control over other ships that could tow the ship and chooses to use a ship with the value of a small planet in tech.
He also is not needed if all they have to do is turn on AI and run away then they wouldn't have a captain at all.
Also if a ship is so powerful they can hack other ships you could just sit the ship stealthed away somewhere and hack any that came too close. no one would know the ship exists you take control and fly them into the sun, they would have no way of having the info leaked as they would be hacked, everything deleted crew all dead problem solved.
Again with tech gaps if they can hack live sensor readings why not use this in more of the tech hacking body armour to trick ground troops, or hacking biolocked weapons so their owners can't use them, so many opportunities missed because the author has very limited scientific knowledge and just explains away anything too technical with AI doing it, whilst keeping humans around for no reason other than a narrative.
Nothing tech-wise is explained the Menosony? Not sure on spelling, the network is connected to each planets AI system yet it's only able to deep scan a fake ID when a person does it... Thats pogwash, you can't have super advanced AI systems in play and add convenient loopholes, there is no way to permanently erase data thats connected to a network that everyone has access to once the information is out theres no knowing the where and how many offline copies were made so the super computer erasing it's tracks doesn't work.

Why have humans at all AI controlled everything would do better at security than humans scanning 360 degrees in real time no visual delay like the eyes have with the brain, no scrambling or audio / visual distractions in the heat of combat, any advanced space going colony would not be able to keep up if they let humans fly thier tech.

Then there is Aden a blackguard who somehow drank the coolade it's quite obvious to me that in the end the twist will be that the Grecians actually went to war because someone pushed them to it.

An enjoyable story but if you basing a story in a high tech world you can't defy logic because science is logic.