Constitution

By: Nick Webb

Narrated by: Greg Tremblay

Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's Summary

The year is 2650. Seventy-five years ago, an alien fleet attacked Earth. Without warning. Without mercy. We were not prepared. Hundreds of millions perished. Dozens of cities burned. We nearly lost everything. Then the aliens abruptly left. We rebuilt. We armed ourselves. We swore: never again. But the aliens never came back. Until now. With overwhelming force the aliens have returned, striking deep into our territory, sending Earth into a panic. Our new technology is useless. Our new ships burn like straw. All our careful preparations are wasted. Now only one man, one crew, and the oldest starship in the fleet stand between the Earth and certain destruction: ISS Constitution.

©2015 Nick Webb (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Derivative, familiar

Nick Webb must watch the same TV shows I do. I also try to write, but when I find myself drifting too close to an idea someone has already used, or just flat out copying the idea, I stop and start over. Webb doesn't have that filtering process. He borrows pretty liberally from Battlestar Galactica, Ender's Game and little from Star Trek (A starship engineer named Scott? Sure! I'll just make her female!) before adding any twists and turns to make the story his own. Really, I thought I was listening to an alternate take on BSG for about half the book as I could almost assign book characters to TV characters one to one. The bummer with this take is the "Adama" (Grainger) is not as inspiring. He's just a blow hard who really shouldn't be as good at space navy tactics as *SPOILER* he may turn out to be.

Once the "borrowing" of familiar groundwork was done, I like he story itself and may continue with the series if they are on sale.

15 of 17 people found this review helpful

Battlestar Galactica on steroids

Loved this, being an old school Battlestar Galactica fan I immediately saw the heavy influence in the first part of the book. Old carrier about to be decommissioned, drunk 1st officer, battle hardened stubborn commander, what appears to be a tech heavy race bent on destroying earth, etc. However the story takes a different path than BG, in a very interesting way. Definitely found myself listening for hours on end, I couldn't get enough. I hope audible and the author add more books in this series soon. Cannot wait to hear the next chapter in this saga! Great performance by the reader as well, highly recommended.

10 of 12 people found this review helpful

I'm not sure what to think about this one..

Any additional comments?

Ok first off i just want to say that the beginning of the book felt a lot like Battlestar Galactica. The similarities are too numerous and too close to get over. On the other side I absolutely love Battlestar Galactica. It's one of my favorite stories, so no big deal right? ...kind of. I couldn't stop listening to the audiobook. The performance was excellent. 5 stars. It fit the genre i was looking for perfectly so i had no complaints there. Except for the details. I feel like the similarities to Battlestar Galactica could have been avoided and the story would have felt just as good because it really was just in the details. I mean how many other sci fi stories are at least a little similar to BSG...more than a few. I'm going to keep my eye on the series and see how the second book goes. Not trying to spoil anything but a few of the similarities between this and BSG may not be there in the other books. So it might be something I can look past. Sorry about the rambling folks. Hope this review helps. There's a lot of negativity about this book and i will say it deserves a bit of it, but I think if you can get past it this story could go places. Give it a chance if you're on the fence. Form your own opinion.

21 of 26 people found this review helpful

No surprise

Typical space opera with lots of ideas from other similar stories. I almost turned it off in the middle but I listened to the end to see if I was right...I was. A few hours of my life I won't get back.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

Very enjoyable and fast paced ride

What made the experience of listening to Constitution the most enjoyable?

So a lot has been said about this being a Battlestar Galactica re-hash, and yes similarities exist and some inspiration was probably drawn from it. That said this is a story on its own and the similarities stop at the Captain and EXO's personalities and failings.
Well worth the purchase of a SCI-FI Opera Fan.
This story has legs and can go places in the seat of you pants suspense and fast paced story line category.

Did Greg Tremblay do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Overall as the majority of characters are male he does reasonably well - especially with the gruff personalities he portrays. Though he seriously lacks in the portrayal of the female characters like Shelby Procter

Any additional comments?

Keep it up Nick Webb- though take some time developing the suspense some more.
Delve some into the science and the limitations of fleet - create more intrigue with the government, the Russians and Swarm.
Throw in a view curve balls and you have a good recipe.

5 of 6 people found this review helpful

NOTHING FANCY, JUST THE TRIED AND TRUE

WHY MAKE FRIENDS, WHEN THEY WILL INEVITABLY DISAPPOINT YOU?
Ender's Game, Star Trek and even a shout out to War Of The Worlds was included in this book. I read the reviews and knew before a bought this, that the book was not real original. I had no problem with that, as most books are a repeat of old themes. Plus I like all those shows. I wish they would have warned me about how cliché the whole books is. It seemed to me that they took the script from several movies and shows, added all the cliché military lines they could think of, stuck them in a computer and told the computer to write a novel.

Nothing happened in the first three hours. A lot of authors, especially for smaller books will start with a battle event or spotting the aliens or anything with some excitement to it. Nick spends three hours setting up his universe. When the action starts the main character proves his cowardliness, by following orders to save some politicians over 30 children. He proves his manhood by making a thinly veiled sarcastic remark to the politician.

Did you know that in the future, the cold war will still be going on. That the British will be in space along with the Americans and the Russians. The Chinese, Japanese , French or anyone else will not be in space. At least in the first four hours there was no mention of them.

This is not a bad book, nor is it a good book. It just is. For me, I got down on it and just could not like it. Every time the characters spotted off some cliché line or tried to curse, it came out sounding silly to me. I don't know if it was the writing or the narrator, but I thought they sounded like a bunch of seventh graders trying to sound tough.

18 of 25 people found this review helpful

Too derivative

The opening of this book felt like the author watched the newer Battlestar Galatica and decided to put a little of their own spin on it. Its not a bad book, just extremely obvious.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Unoriginal and inconsistent

I’m confused. The aliens can travel from the edge of the solar system to the moon in just over an hour, but the time to get from the moon to earth takes, what seems like hours.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

formulaic sci-fi

Sooo very very predictable. Platitudes, cliches, and plot sequences basically lifted from other works made for boredom if it wasn't so laughable.
All this smothered in quantum gibberish to try to make it more palatable.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Disappointed

Pop corn space opera, I love a good sci-fi story, this was to simple, very quick paced, maybe to fast. Narration was less then desired. Characters are very predicable. Oh well, will try to find something with a little more depth.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

excellent space opera

Any additional comments?

This is a well constructed and relatively light Sci fi space opera. Interesting and convincing plot. I have read everything over the last 50 years and I can commend this book to future readers. It's not earth shattering such as early Niven (Ringworld) or late A.C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama) or more recently the fabulous James A Cory; however in accordance with contemporary Sci fi: it scores 5* because it's up there with the best of John Ringo (as sole author), any of Ryk Brown, B V Larson or Joshua Dalzelle, but not quite as good as the best of John Scalzi. To the author - we need less fighter jocks, heavier Sci fi, larger galactic range, more humour, a complex romantic interest and a greater use of polysyllabic words (I take it that you are writing for adults? In which case I like to learn something from every chapter. I should also add that Greg Tremblay did a superb job, I actually liked his strange Scottish accent - trust this assists. R

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Trilogy ok but not great!

I'll write this for entire trilogy. You can read book 1 through 3. But there was 1 thing : Deus ex machina" like event through out the entire series (yes I don't mean time traveling). Book 1 was ok (few or none ) book 2 (several "deus ex" like events) book 3 "deus ex machina" on the bigger scale (plot impact I mean). You may still like the series itself (story is ok, characters are ok - every thing is ok.... but not great and solutions that "save the day" ... could be more subtly introduce into story or better justified.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Excellant, Going start to finish

Some strong similarities to the Battlestar Galactica story yet different in everyway that matters, gripped hold of me and would not let me go start to finish.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Bad copy of battlestar galactica

If you do not like battlestar galactica do not buy did as it is a badly written copy , if you like battlestar galactica do not buy this as you will hate it

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Fantastic space opera

Where does Constitution rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Just finished listening to this book with tears streaming down my face as the climax and finish is very emotional as the writer has embroiled you into the main character of the Constitutions captain. The books finish leaves quite a few questions unanswered which I do hope means that we will be presented with a sequel to this novel, if so cannot wait. Give us more.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful

Brilliant

Really well scripted story arch and performance by Greg Tremblay who managed to bring the characters alive!

Not bad but nothing new

Characters are very one dimensional and the narrative linear no parallel plot lines unless you count the Russian plot line which is not fleshed out enough.

Absolutely Brilliant

This book took off almost straight from the start and had me hooked within minutes.

Cannot wait to get going on the second book.

Great space opera.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful

A must buy, great all round. :)

What made the experience of listening to Constitution the most enjoyable?

Two factors, having a solid story that I would love to read, and a great performance.

What other book might you compare Constitution to, and why?

Other books, not so sure. But story wise it has elements of Battleships and Space Above and Beyond, both a great film and TV series, (back in the day)

Which scene did you most enjoy?

I have to admit getting towards the ending. Where Tim is with Abe in the sick bay. Worrying over the state of his own life and then picking his backside up and not settling for giving it anything but his all.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Jessica - the fighter pilot whose thoughts flitted to her comrades and her family. Giving all she had and never letting go of the fact it was still her duty to be there, to die to protect them all.

Any additional comments?

I have to admit, I've been a member of Audible for some many months now, and got a few books on my list, listened to a few part way through and lots of samples. However, this is the first book I've listened to from beginning to end. I'm not an easy pleased reader, or I found listener, the story itself and characters were a hard to track at first, and the chapters too short for me, but the names began to register and the more I listened to this story, the more I fell in love with it. The narration itself was what kept my interest, from the differences in character's speech and traits, it was very easy to listen to and to get involved with. When I anticipated something was going to happen, not only did the performance keep up with it, it kept me guessing till the last minute.

I already bought the book, and pre-ordered the next audio. It's been a great few days of listening (in my van at work) now what am I gonna do. lol...

Excellent job to both writer and narrator.

1 of 2 people found this review helpful