Lunar Discovery

Discovery Series, Book 1

By: Salvador Mercer

Narrated by: Mark Boyett

Length: 9 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's Summary

What lies on the dark side of the moon could change the course of humanity forever.

When a Chinese rover discovers an alien technology on the dark side of the moon, it is up to Richard "Rock" Crandon and his NASA team of scientists and engineers to devise a way to return before the Chinese and Russians.

Forced to deal with bureaucratic oversight and a complex team of personalities, Rock Crandon pushes his team to their limits.

With pressure mounting, the world is pushed closer to conflict and war as the NASA team finds itself seriously behind in the newly initiated space race. The future of mankind, its ideological and technological advances are at stake, as the world's super powers race to discover what lies on the dark side of the moon.

Who will get there first, and at what cost?

©2015 Salvador Mercer (P)2016 Podium Publishing

Surprising start to a promising series.

If you could sum up Lunar Discovery in three words, what would they be?

Dynamic
Interesting
Original

What was one of the most memorable moments of Lunar Discovery?

The rescue scenario ( not a spoiler, as it can't be a series if they all die) is compelling listening.

Have you listened to any of Mark Boyett’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't recall any, although I know I have listened to his work in the past. He is very good in this offering.

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

The dynamics between some of the characters are moving at times.

Any additional comments?

Some glitches in the production ( I listen on headphones, and there was some background noises ). There is also a lack of proper research, with naming conventions abit off, and the never ending repeating of the time setting is redundant.

All that said, this is a unique, slightly derivative but nonetheless solid beginning to a series that I will be sure to listen to through to the end. A solid credit worthy sci fi investment.

Decent story, obvious stereotypes, poor science.

Lunar Discovery reads like a story that should have gone through another round or two of editing. The author uses multiple systems of measurement in scientific and military settings (miles, clicks, kilograms, etc.), and has a heavy dose of seemingly scientific dialog that reads like it came from a paraphrased series of Wikipedia articles. Examples are that missions to the moon are somehow planned, developed, and implemented in a matter of months. Another is an apparent blast wave from a nuclear explosion above the surface of the moon.

There is no atmosphere in space. There would not be a blast wave.

Each chapter begins with "in the near future", as if the reader needs constant reminder that "In the near future, Day 10" and "In the near future, Day 11" would be wildly different periods of time if "In the near future" weren't present. If the timeline jumped around from chapter to chapter, then it might be helpful, but the timeline appears to only advance day-by-day in a forward direction. We can add.

Names are hilariously stereotypical among the American, Chinese, and Russian characters.

I want to like this story, but the lack of polish and the "meh" level of narration is posing a challenge.

This book is about human tech...

...which is fine and interesting, but by the title I assumed there would be fascinating alien concepts and tech. I think that's the true test for space fiction. Requires a lot of creativity! There's only a tiny bit of that in this story. Maybe in the next book?

A Must Read.

I read and listen to a lot of books, with sci-fi and mystery thrillers (Agent Pendergast) being my drugs of choice, so I'l am not a novice to Audible. In my humble opinion this book is on par, if not above "The Marian." The plot is well thought out and plausible. The action is steady and not over powering. You are left on the edge of your seat and may find yourself overfilling your dog's bowl or shushing your spouse. The best part is Salvador keeps you intrigued and wanting more. Questioning, what if? You are not sidetracked by character building. Salvador stays true to the story and displays very good research and subject knowledge.
I highly recommend this book to any and everyone, particularly lucky fools new to Audible. This book will definitely get you hooked!

Tech savvy people beware

I stopped listening after ten minutes. This is supposed to be a book about technology, and it contains three howlers in the first ten minutes, including one in the first sentence. They were: "Oxygen in the atmosphere caught fire," "A species that had literally no culture" (followed by a member of that species giving a verbal command to prepare for battle.) And then the final straw: "The voltage must be less than one megawatt."

If these don't bother you, the writing quality seems fine, the narrator is good, and the story may be interesting.

Somehow comes off as a Tom Clancy book in space.

Not stellar, a lot of USA and NASA chest thumping. Very light on the sci-fi.

Some characters do nothing for the story other then ask for clarification for simple concepts and be "not very nice" (ehm, every NSA member). This book seems like it is always holding your hand, wasting alot of time on overblown explanations ham fisted into the dialog (comes off about as natural as a rabbit laying eggs).

The characters are not very well devoloped (there are alot of them however) and it became hard to care if the "good" guys pulled it off in the end.

It is too bad as the idea was neat and the audio performance was great but this book was a dissapointment.

I couldn't finish it.

I'm not one to write bad reviews because I'm just such a huge fan of the genre. But this isn't Sci-fi. It's...just bureaucracies trying to out do each other. Overly technical at times and it just doesn't move. Nothing much happens. I wish the author and publisher the best of luck but I can't recommend anyone invest your time or money into this book.

Wow

I made it about 23 chapters and then it completely lost me in a moment. The chinese government is acting so irrationally and unrealistically that I can’t even listen anymore. Even sci-fi requires a basis in reality.

Poor fiction

Attempted listening didn’t know the type of garbage when I downloaded. I didn’t even last the first hour. Didn’t realize that I could of returned this. Damn shame I only now learned this

Boring

Very light on the science. Other reviewers have also pointed out all of the technical errors in the book.

The sections with the Chinese and Russians were cringeworthy due to the narrator's performance. The author should stick to writing what he knows.

Short novel with multiple storylines? = flat characters.

About 90% of this novel is just political mud slinging. Other 10% is a rip-off of 2001.

Avoid if you're looking for science fiction. Maybe fans of fantasy will like it.

Discover every cliche

Any additional comments?

The characters in this story pander the worst storytelling stereotypes. What makes it worse is that they seemed to be trapped in the 1970s! The leading Russian protagonists are Vladimir, Dimitri and Olga - I can only imagine that Ivan was on holiday. They talk in that weird Cold War spy film vernacular that no one actually speaks ("...my old friend and mentor", to give one example) and one even ends his sentences "..., comrade"! And this is supposed to be set in the 'near future' as the narrator reminds us at the start of every chapter - so more than thirty years after the end of the Soviet Union.

I bought the audiobook because a number of reviews commented on the technical details. I can only assume that these reviewers don't come from a science background. There were two howlers in the opening five minutes, absolute nonsense about 'trapped microwave radiation' ( I can only guess that Mercer hasn't heard of the inverse square rule), and the classic line that the ship "accelerated at a constant velocity", which has now become a family catch-phrase.

The story itself is the type of thing you'd have gotten out of Hollywood during the height of the Cold War if it was sponsored by NASA: American brilliance, incompetent and/or corrupt Chinese and Russians. But most disappointing is that the story is not properly concluded (almost as if there is going to be a second book). This isn't fair on those who have paid good money for a full story.

The narrator did a fair job, but his English accent was all over the shop - all the way from Dick Van Dyke to Queen Elizabeth - sometimes in the same sentence. I'm no expert on Russian, but all the character had exactly the same accent and spoke in the same stilted fashion - this wasn't helped by the corny dialogue, comrade.

All in all, there's nothing to see here, move along, move along... .

Good science and plot, but characters are 2D

If you could sum up Lunar Discovery in three words, what would they be?

Enjoyable realistic Sci-fi

What was one of the most memorable moments of Lunar Discovery?

Just before the Rabbit (If I explain further then it's a spoiler.)

What about Mark Boyett’s performance did you like?

Good consistent delivery although I am not sure why he ascribes a British accent to one of the NASA ground staff when there is no mention of his origins in the book.

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

No. I like a book I can enjoy, especially while driving.

Any additional comments?

It's clear that the book could have developed the characters better, but that might have taken away from the tempo of the narrative. There is good science here but nicknaming the main character 'Rock' was not a good way to elevate him in any way and the Chinese characters were badly neglected in the second half. For future books it would be good to revisit some of these to maintain the human aspect of the story to match the science moving forward.

really enjoyed this

well written, nice story, pro-yanky! but why not! fun, exciting and a decent amount of adventure.

Terrible SF

Cheesy storyline (hello Arthur C. Clarke) and cliched characters. I burst out laughing when after about 5 minutes after discovering an unknown signal from the moon, a scientist said ‘It’s aliens’!

Initail Thoughts

Ok Good story at the outset. What Gets my GOAT is the constant Refernce at the start of nearly every major Sequence to the "IN THE NEAR FUTURE DAY XX" This is a totally useless statement as everyone knows at the start of the book it is in the NEAR FUTURE. So why repeat it every 10 mins or so. In a multi part Novel. You just need to state the time frame at the start of each Part. Having Just completed the Dark Fleet Trilogy (all three) which is far more technical in its content it was a better LISTEN.

A tension-packed and fast paced space race tale

Mercer has created a nicely observed, near-future, story of what might happen if we found evidence of an alien artefact on the moon. Slightly reminiscent of The Space Odyssey, but with an easy fast-paced style, full of high tension scenes and realpolitik choices. The author paints humans reacting exactly as you would expect as they race to get to the high value prize.

The Narration by, Mark Boyett brings the novel to life. He makes a brave stab at injecting national and regional accents, which is largely helpful, bringing colour to the story and aiding in identification of the in-focus character. However, he completely lacerates the English accent, falling into the Dick Van Dyke style of faux London cockney, which unfortunately was a bit of a distraction & for me, and 'ground my gears' whenever I heard it.

I will be 'reading' the next book in the series. when my next credit comes through.

Mediocre, not really worth a listen

As others mention, the whole "near future" thing is a mistake on the editor's part. It should have been said only once or maybe a handful of times. The voice acting is mediocre, but acceptable, not the performer's best work as I've heard much better from him.
The story is intriguing, but would probably be better off in a short story form, not a full book. As for the techno-babble, it's just that: babble. It uses some technical words but uses them completely wrong most of the time, and much of it doesn't make any sense at all. It also seems to be more of a Cold War story, except for being set in the near future. The characters are basic stereotypes and not interesting at all. There are also some large plot holes and mistakes. Some plot lines seem to go somewhere and then just don't and turn out to be of no relevance at all. Simple filler or not fully formed ideas put in anyway.
The book also ends pretty abruptly. With a lazy retrospective exposition kind of ending added on. As if the story had already ended and then the author thought about making a series out of it, so a last minute rushed ending was added on. The ending of the story makes no sense at all, but I won't spoil it here. It's easily the laziest and weakest part of an already not very good book.

Excellent audio

This is a well performed audio, kept me engaged throughout. Looking forward to the in the series

Easy listening

an easygoing strait forward listen relaxing enjoyable but had a slow steady build little to surprise.

A bit slow

This book is nothing to get exited about. Just scientists talking and politicians plotting and a thing on the moon and then the book ends. More like an intoduction to a story that still has to be written.