KTF Part 2

Galaxy's Edge Season 2, Book 7

By: Jason Anspach, Nick Cole

Narrated by: R.C. Bray

Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

It all ends here.

Every decision, battle, triumph, and heartache has led the galaxy to this moment.

The Republic is spun wildly into sudden war as Gomarii slavers, in overwhelming numbers, strike on behalf of their Savage allies. The battle is fiercest on a newly rediscovered world: Earth.

But galactic war is only the symptom of an older, deeper, and far more dangerous conflict. Now, Keel and Ravi must work frantically to assemble the warriors needed to withstand an ancient threat, and Prisma must wrestle to control her own inner darkness. While on the front lines, Death’s grim specter comes for Chhun and Victory Company.

For once again, a Legion stands steadfast before the void.

KTF Part Two marks the end of Galaxy’s Edge: Season Two, and of the expansive story arc that began long ago with Legionnaire. Listen with caution, for here is where the characters you have come to know and love will meet their ultimate fates.

Includes special notes from the authors.

©2022 Jason Anspach and Nick Cole (P)2023 Podium Audio

A Rushed Departure, and Unsatisfying Conclusion

First off, I am a Galaxy's Edge long-time insider subscriber. I've listened to every book up to KTF 1 and 2 at least 4 or more times. I love the world building and the intricate stories they've woven. However, this book represents a major departure from their modus operandi. I lost count how many times I said, "Wait, what? What did I miss? What happened?", just to rewind and realize entire segments were just not there. This story was as if they had a storyboard outline for the conclusion of all these story arcs and wrote only the parts that were bulletin points. There's nothing to build there. Too many things are skipped over or are told to us without showing us. They spent a big chunk of the book writing an inconsequential battle and skipped over the parts of the story that really needed to be told.

I feel like I had a lazy tour guide who walked me through a museum in 5 minutes when the brochure said it would take 3 hours. Sure, I SAW all of the exhibits... but only in passing without explanation.

It reminds me of the last season of Game of Thrones, just time skipping and hitting the big points to quickly draw a conclusion so they could go direct Star Wars. I'm not sure why JA and NC would treat the ending like Season 8 of GoT, but perhaps they've got their next project lined up also. It's a shame, really. Let me give you examples...


**SPOILERS**
How did Prizma live a thousand lifetimes in the Savage Hulk and become an adult? What was her journey? How did she become more powerful than everyone else? Don't know, happened off page. The Golden King had an entire plan to deceive the galaxy through his orchestrated invasions, and then you never hear of it again. How were the dark ones enslaved, and how did the Ancients fail to do whatever was done? Who are the Dark Ones? Neelo's AI betrayed him, as did his most trusted lieutenant, but any more details than simply that? Neelo surely had communication still. What were their fates? Don't know, happened off page. What happened to Rechs' AI Lyra? What happened to Maestro or his betrayal plans? What happened with Kill Team Ice? Who knows or cares, I guess. How did Wildman teleport planets and somehow end up helping during a battle? What happened to him? What happened to the preacher bot, and why/how was he receiving savage doctrine? What sort of being was Bubbles, and what happened to it during the final battle? Macafee just kinda vanishes, and we are simply told he undertook a huge mission and accomplished it successfully. Why was he a dirty wizard? What was his fate afterward? Don't even get me started on Crometheus and his 50 parts randomly introduced, and just as quickly abandoned. What happened to the bots and DDOW? How did Keel react to DDOW's actions and subsequent freedom? Why did Garrett suddenly disappear from the story? What happened to Zora? Did Kel Turner survive? What happened to Carter? Did he talk to Neelo again? What happened to Bear? What about Praxis or the Cybar? Did Keel ever get the memory reversal treatment that Carter got? Are we to assume that literally never came up? Ravi was on deaths door and can't move... oh wait, nevermind, he's fine now. Andine was an afterthought and inserted into the last 5 minutes as a corpse on the floor. Then there's Skrizz and the Koobs. An entire storyline abandoned in both of their instances. Skrizz vowed to steal a ship and go to Prizma (this doesn't happen for some unknown reason until after the battle AND the book is over), and the Koobs were supposed to learn the fate of their homeworld. PEOPLE JUST DROP OFF AND NEVER GET MENTIONED AGAIN, IN THE MIDDLE OF A STORY THEY'RE INVOLVED IN! What the hell happened to everyone, and how the hell did anyone get to where they were going and how did those relationships react and evolve to what occurred?
**END SPOILERS**

I could keep going and write a thesis here on how they crammed 5 books of story conclusions into one book without so much as an explanation to how anyone truly got there, but this review is already too long. These are simply the plot points, but beyond the big questions, there are entire stories left out. How did X character get where they suddenly appear? How did they come to make their actions? How did the people around them respond to their actions? How did the final moments of X character play out? What led them to that moment? What were the results of their actions? Frankly, the entire battle sequences of this book, which are hours long, could've been cut, and it wouldn't have impacted a thing. I love a good battle, but if we are counting words, those words should've been on the story that mattered. This is your biggest franchise, and you D&D'd it.

The authors say they're done with these characters, but even if they weren't they would have to release KTF Part 1.1, Part 1.2, and so on to even correct the mess they're leaving behind. I understand leaving holes for Crometheus and Thomas Roman for their own respective trilogy series, but the rest is inexcusable. This end is completely unsatisfying, unlike "Season 1". I may have to reconsider this as my go-to recommendation series to others.

One of the most boring endings

I have become annoyed with this series for the last few books but have kept listening because I thought that the ending would be interesting and satisfying. To me, it seems like there has been a lot of effort to write battle scenes that they either didn't have time or didn't care to actually tell a good story, which is particularly disappointing considering that this is the conclusion of the series. This book skips over filling in details on what is happening with the most interesting characters and instead is loaded with chapters of battle scenes ( some of which i skipped because it was becoming so annoying) where everything is over explained and to me doesn't seem to move the story along that much.

As for the ending, prepare to be disappointed.

The 50 minute long interview with the authors is also pretty annoying. They seem to do this on a lot of their books but when I buy a book that says 12 hours long and an hour is taken up by this "after action report" nonsense, I feel like its used to pad the run time.

Compressed story lines and padded runtime

"KTF Part 2: Abridged" should be the actual title.

They had an outline, wrote some lines for each heading, smashed it together and called it a day.


A lot of plot points were either breazed over or wrapped up far too quickly. Seemed like more of the book could have been focused on those rather than the "filler" battle on Kima about half way in the book. The authors were definitely just trying to cash out and move on to something else.

And we got yet another hour of the authors doing a Q&A just to pad the run time at the end of the audiobook. They have no shame.

Galaxy's Edge has been one of my favorite series but i believe im done with these authors.

Fantastic narration as always by Mr. Bray, however.

For the finale…. Meh

I love this series and have invested hundreds of hours into it. I’ve never disliked any of the book in the series. However, this book was a huge let down. If it had been just another book in the series, it would be fine. Instead, this was the finale to almost all of my favorite characters and it was void of emotion and rushed. Best comparison is the finale of Game of Thrones. I still love the series but just…. Feel cheated. KTF…. With a wimper.

This story deserved better

Rushed ending. Loose ends. And yet ANOTHER hour-long awful Q&A. Done with these authors.

despair

killed all my favorite characters off in the earlier books whose left.. didn't care about the one who lived never like then anyway but have chance to have a great redeemship but blew it . I don't like Greek tradgy....... didn't like it at all.... I'm a happy ending type of guy. we're the hero wins .. you killed off the only person I really was rooting for ...

Horrible last quarter.

The whole ending of the book feels insanely rushed. You can kinda start getting that feeling by the half way point but the last quarter is horrible. Someone else mentioned the long drawn out battle scenes and how it feels like the authors spent more time writing those then actually wrapping up the story and it’s true. The actual plot points and characters (what few they don’t just kill off screen because it’s too much effort to tell their story) rush buy in like 15-30 min splurges followed by hour long battle scenes. And the actual conclusion is horrendous. They don’t actually wrap anyones story up and just kinda leaves everything feeling hollow and grossly unsatisfying. It’s like they realized they needed to actually end the book and rushed it out as quickly as they could. The galaxy’s edge series has been a long standing favorite of mine but this is by far one of the worse books in the entire expanded saga purely because of the ending.

Welp, Ends Just like Expeditionary Force. Bummer

Welp, I thought surely they wouldn't let this end the way Expeditionary Force ended - rushed and a mess. But, it was completely rushed and a mess. It was like the authors forgot previous parts of the book. Characters appeared, disappeared, and story arcs just disappeared. I was willing to overlook the fact that the last two books should have been one, but then the 60 minute "Behind the Scenes" "live"-audio-event at the end is just an hour of VERY HARD TO LISTEN TO AUDIO with no editing and lots of bad jokes that I paid for. They even mentioned during the audio-event people couldn't ask questions about THIS BOOK THAT I HAD JUST LISTENED TO, because it was recorded in Nov. 2022. What's the point then?
When I heard the words "Epilogue" I said to myself, "Wait, it can't be time for that yet".

Okay ending to this series. Kinda predictable.

In this series I really enjoyed the Wraith persona of Kiel (sp?). And would have liked to have gotten more of that. But there was a good amount of Wraith although the authors seems to want to merget the Wraith and Kiel personas into a whole personality. This story really isn't about that. The most entertaining part of this whole book was Death Destroyer of Worlds. Now that is a story line I would like to see more of. I didn't think the Cromethius or Mistro story lines were good to begin with and in this book it got too much like The Matrix. Kinda ruined this book for me. In the "After Action Report" the authors said they would be exploring more of Cromethius and Mistro. Those are books I will stay away from. There are a lot of borrowed story themes in this series. And they have been played out numerous times in many different stories. The authors really need to step it up a notch. The ending was basically the end of "Lord of the Rings." The authors really should have ended the Galaxy's Edge after the first series. Seems this second series just isn't up to the same standard. I guess writing endings is hard. That is why there are so few good stories. A bad ending can ruin a perfectly good story. The ending here wasn't terrible just not really good.

Disappointed

I have invested so many hours in this universe just to have the author spit in my face. It makes me think Jason wrote season 8 of Game Of Thrones on HBO….

That's it....? Seriously?

Well... I'm done with these authors. They butchered this story. It is not that they write badly, but this book was so horribly rushed! The legacy of this story is unfinished plot points, characters completely abandoned, rampant deus ex machina, backtracking on Season 3 of the characters, and little pay-off for anyone. Also, as usual, the end part of the book was the usual podcast panel style chat at the end, which i normally sit through, but this time, I couldn't do it. I was so annoyed by the awful rushed ending they did that I'd rather just forget about this series entirely. It's such a shame. They did a freakin' Game of Thrones!!!

oh, the savages are so awful!
oh, the dark ones are so awful!
oh, we resolved these bad guys in 5 minutes...
...wait...
what!?
that's it?

...and Crometheus?
"Look how they massacred my boy!"

While there is likely some reason for the authors rushing the story, it still doesn't make up for the fact that someone seriously dropped the ball on this one... off a cliff... into lava.

Good job! 👍

A wise man

Once told me if you have nothing good to say then say nothing and apart from RCBs performance being excellent as usual I have nothing else to say about this book

Season 2: A disaster mitigated by RC Bray

The entirety of "season 2" of Galaxy's Edge is unfortunately an unfocused and unsatisfying mess. Several of the individual books are more like sections of one larger one split arbitrarily with an inexplicable focus on numerous individual skirmishes that have little relevance to the overall plot.

Towards the end revelations come out of nowhere and plot threads invested in elsewhere just end without mention, others resolved "off screen".

If you're reading this and there's a series of prequels published after this which go back to deal with these threads then you can assume this was down purposefully so the reader has to buy another later series of books in order to understand how or why anything happened in this one.

If you can just finish at the end of season 1 and assume all the characters went on to have various exciting adventures.

RC Bray elevates this as he does with everything but at this point I feel like authors now lean on his talents.

epic

story superb, writing superb, narration of course superb, these books seem to be over all to soon listened to this in three sittings it's great to finally hear a well thought out ending, not cut short or rushed, I get the impression they knew at the beginning how it was all going to end, so pleased the final chapter of the story was split into two books. How this isn't a TV show yet I'll never know, listen to it...it will change your outlook on the sci-fi genre

Unsatisfying

As others have mentioned, the story seems rushed at the end and has sone major plot holes.

a bit disappointing

Rushed plotline and novel not long enough. Major characters entirely missed out or just a cursory mention. To me it feels as if the authors are fed up with it now and just want to end it in favour of other projects.
it all felt quite unsatisfying in comparison to much of the series...which I loved.

Great story the whole series.

Not hearing about other characters endings was sad and sad quite a few died..

Another Missing Hour of Story

Am disappointed by another short book in this series that has an hour missing, which is instead filled up with a pointless 'questions to the authors' session at the end. Why can't they just give out a URL to the additional audio instead? I'm certainly not interested in it. In fact, whilst I mostly enjoy the stories, I find the fact that grown men go out of their way (even flying to a different country) to be part of something like that really sad and pathetic. And then I think: I'm a grown man - does listening to this series make me sad and pathetic as well? Here's a tip to Podium: don't make your listeners feel like they might be sad and pathetic.

To me, these additional hours of interviews and questions are clearly added to make it seem like the already short story is longer than it is. It's verging on fraud - it would be like buying a pint of milk to find that ten percent was missing.

This happened on the last story as well and I decided to get my credit refunded on that occasion. I also noticed that Audible haven't published my negative review for the last story, so hope an Amazon company isn't withholding negative reviews as that would be a real scandal.

As for the story, it was okay. Though I feel this series is pretty much done now. It's getting so repetitive that I could probably write one of these books myself (had I the time). Whilst endings are hard to write, the ending of this book seemed quite a let down. There was a big build up to a big reveal about one of the characters that never really happens in any depth. Kind of get the feeling that the writers were more of in a rush to get this book out and didn't really know what to do with all the arcs they'd built up.

I'm still considering getting a refund on this book due the mis-advertised duration. Will I be continuing with the series after this book? Possibly not.

a decent conclusion after the ktf 1 novella

lots of plot lines tied together and strands dealt with. they seem to have forgot maestro was FOUND by the savages, espically judging by the qna after the book. its a shame some of the heavy hitters just showed up as a plot device with no intro or farewell, that just felt like 3 scentances crammed in after they realised how many fans went 'wtf' at 'ktf' part one (wildman) and the the missing what happened, garett, Jack, etc

Another fantastic chapter in the story!

Galaxy's Edge continues to be an unmissable story arc for me, Anspach and Cole providing engaging and exciting new chapters time after time. RC Bray continues to be a legend, and no-one could deliver a better performance for these characters - I'd rather wait for a delayed chapter for him to come available than to have someone else narrate it and ruin it (as has happened recently with a different series).