Espero

A Silver Ships Novel

By: S. H. Jucha

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Trouble infiltrated the Harakens' capital city of Espero, in the form of New Terra criminal gangs who grew wealthy and powerful on the moons of Ganymede, hiding behind the cover of an ill-conceived mining charter. The gangs brought stims and addictive hallucinogenic drugs to Espero, distributing them to the young on the planet.

Christie Racine and her friends visited a hidden club rumored to be a source of the dangerous drugs and have run afoul of the criminals running the illegal establishment. Kidnapped and transported out of Hellébore's system aboard a freighter, the girls become desperate to free themselves.

Alex Racine, Christie's brother and president of the Harakens, races to discover where the girls were taken. The trail leads Alex from Espero to the pleasure domes of Jolares, a moon orbiting a gas giant in Oistos, the New Terrans' home system. Alex's search is complicated by the discovery of not one, but three sets of pleasure domes, each on its own moon and run by its own criminal mastermind.

It becomes a dangerous game of hide-and-seek as the Harakens attempt to recover their girls and locate the biochemist who created the dangerous hallucinogen, without panicking the kidnappers. The Harakens' efforts are complicated by the duplicitous scheme of "Mr. Blue" and "Sniffer", two gang leaders, who seek to steal the domes of "Craze", the third gang leader, in a dangerous double-cross.

Alex and his people thought things couldn't get any more complicated until they discover the gangs have gone to war with deadly stunners and plasma rifles in a fight for possession of the Haraken girls, who are caught between the rivals.

©2017 S. H. Jucha (P)2017 Hannon Books, Inc.

Very happy!

Very happy that I found this author and series. Have enjoyed all the books so far equally well, which I intend to be high praise.

Returning to New Terra

Love Zara’s character development and the interplay-with Miranda. The world of the Silver Ships is expanding nicely

One if the best series

I cannot recommend these books enough. It has really well developed and interesting characters. Get them.

Continued Bliss Silver Ship Saga

The author continues with continuity and subjects intimate character. Love the series and look forward to next.

Drug lords & organized crime in space

Espero is S. H. Jucha's 6th installment in the Silver Ships series. As Haraken has been humming along nicely, some of the seedier elements from New Terra have slowly established themselves in Espero, the Haraken main city. When Alex's sister is kidnapped by a drug gang, Alex and crew come to the rescue and end up dealing with crime organizations, hamstrung New Terran investigators, clueless local leaders, and corrupt politicians. As always, the Haraken direct and indirect approach is entertaining to follow.

Nothing new in terms of sci-fi elements relative to earlier installments, but Haraken is building bigger, more powerful spacecraft that might augur some more futuristic plotlines. The SADEs meanwhile are fully mobile and play a central role in solving the numerous crimes. This tale is largely a social commentary on political and legal structures that serve to enrich the few well connected. From the outcome, Alex looks to be about done with Earth, New Terra, being president, and ready for a real space adventure.

The narration is quite superb with an excellent range of voices and good pacing.

Great Series of Books, but...

Alex and friends return to fight new foes (even if personal freedoms and local laws are broken in the name of painting morales based on a single person’s view of “doing what’s right.”

I do love this series of books, but I also notice that it has become glaringly apparent that among this universe of 3 populated solar systems of humans (& 1 non-human species) that same sex attractions have only been mentioned perhaps 3 times, thus far, and each time, the same sex admirer was a woman criminal toward a non-receptive “bait” woman (police, army, security force, etc.). I won’t attempt to state “soft” statistics on the matter of human self-image vs. human sexual behavior, but I will mention that these books are all published post 2015, not 1915.

Before I fall off my soap-box (or perhaps be stun-gunned off), I’ll also state that the series of books has plenty of heterosexual parings (complete with children born out of wedlock), but there have been no marriages thus far in the entire series of books. What does this demonstrate? That an author can choose to paint any morale depictions that they desire, no matter how out of sync they might be with present day reality. After all, it is fiction, right?

Just be warned “in real life” that one should always consciously choose one’s actions, friends, and views toward others, rather than “follow the crowd,” even if it seems to be a “popular crowd.”

Getting a bit tiresome

First and foremost I love the premise of this book and how it started I do intend to listen to All of the audiobooks provided but I got to say at this point Alex the main character is becoming tiresome another person said he unilaterally uses the threat of force or actual Force to bypass laws that he feels inconvenient and everybody around him bows down to it a wholeheartedly agree with that.

The only way in my mind that this makes sense is if later on down the line the main character Alex actually becomes the villain if he doesn't become the villain then all these books will just simply have the repetitious cycle of him deeming whatever moral ground he stands on is where everyone else should be and everyone else should get in line or he has the authority to physically emotionally or verbally threatened them to get in line, it doesn't make any sense and it doesn't make for a likable character long-term again unless he becomes the ultimate villain in the end kind of like that saying you can bow out while you are famous or you can watch yourself become infamous

The story continues

6 read more to come. The enjoyment continues. Read summary for this book and thought “? Don’t know” but it was as good as the rest of the series.

I really enjoy this series

I can easily see why my friends recommended Silver Ships.

For me the real test of a book is weather or not I look forward to the next chapter, in this series I always look forward to hearing more.

I always enjoy narration by Grover Gardner as well.

Filler book but still decent.

I almost skipped this one based on other reviews, but I'm glad I didnt. The blue collar chip on my shoulder and dissatisfaction with my country's politics especially enjoyed the later part of this book.