Marshal the Stars

Lone Wolf Squadron, Book 1

By: Jamie Davis, Michael Anderle

Narrated by: Joel Richards

Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

A Lone Wolf Pilot, a Debt of Honor, and Pirates on the Federation Frontier

Fighter pilot Beau Ward was always willing to bend the rules to get the job done. His "independent" attitude got him bounced around the Federation Fleet for years—until he took it too far.

A long-standing debt has been called in, and he's the one who must pay it back.

Beau's actions land him a last chance command in the frontier system of Tardex with the order to assist an old friend and shipmate whose family has been torn apart by pirates.

Tasked with commanding a collection of misfit pilots, Beau must gather the squadron, scrounge for ships, and rescue the captured colonists before it's too late.

A Pricolici engineer, a former scrounger from the Skaine mob, a grizzled Marine sergeant, and a green recruit. What could go wrong?

Can Beau hold Lone Wolf Squadron together long enough to stage a rescue?

©2022 LMBPN Publishing (P)2022 Tantor

Another Jamie Davis Masterclass!!!

Marshall the Stars starts off by introducing us to the Tardex System and a small township on a planet that has been colonised. There they are hit by Raiders, but instead of just robbing them this time, they take people. We learn that some of these people belong to a person called Hale, who used to work for the Fleet, and he has called in some favours to try and get his family back.
This brings us to Commander Beau “Lobo” Ward, the main character in the story. Ward is what one can only describe as a misfit. He is an outstanding pilot, probably one of the best in the fleet, but he is insubordinate, and doesn’t follow orders, nor does he follow protocols (I’ll let you read why, it is funny!!).
As a result, Ward is shunted to the far reaches of the galaxy, to Tardex, to help Hale (who happens to be his old friend – and he has a debt to), to help him find his family, and help the colony with their Raider problem.
He has barely any resources, but has been given a young Ensign who is good at admin to help him, Ensign Brian Grady, who can also fly. They soon pick up another stray who no one wants, Lt Charlene, Charli for short, Price “Gears”.
Charli is a Pricolici – that is, she has nanites in her and when she gets a bit touchy, she morphs losing all but the stretchy undies and sports bra she wears, into a rather menacing Werewolf type creature that will disembowel you in about the same time it takes you to pee your pants. As well as being a pilot and brutal in hand-to-hand, Charli is an expert mechanic (thus her callsign).
To round out the team, they get a Skaine, a race no one really likes as they are considered thieves by most, or at least dodgy. The Skaine though, see themselves as opportunists, playing the ultimate barter game, each deal is its own ‘Battle’ and they fight to get the best deal, at any cost. Lt Ka’Ahtay or “Katy” is their scavenger, the person who looks for anything they need, at the best price or barter and gets it.
Under Ward, they become Lone Wolf Squadron, and head to Tardex where they begin to set up and wait for the raiders to come. And this is where the story gets really interesting!!
Although Ward is the main character, we do get snippets from multiple other characters throughout this book as we are introduced to Hale, Charli, Katy and even the Raiders themselves. It provides a great scope to the story and allows us too not only follow the main story through Ward, but fill in several of the side stories, or even get input to the main tale. Davis gives us this in-depth story through this style and we also get to learn a lot about the different characters.
As mentioned above, the character work is one of the brilliant parts of this story (and has always been such a key part of Davis’s writing), as we get this powerful, character driven story.
The other really fantastic part of this book is the world building which creates this captivating universe to tell this story in. The detail and descriptive work that has gone into every aspect of this story, from the characters, to the starships, the weapons, and the different groups like the Raiders/Fleet/Colonists, is all exceptional.
Ward and his team of misfits find themselves up against a bit more than they bargained for, and it is going to take each of their considerable individual skills to be able to defeat the Raiders. However, each of these ‘Lone Wolves’ also learns that the only way that they can really achieve their goals, and rescue the colonists, as well as stay alive, is to work as a team and help each other.
This is a combination of exciting action, but with some intelligent introspection as well. There are a lot of parallels between this and something like Firefly with that misfit crew on the edge of civilisation trying to help – although this time, they are on the other side of the law (mostly). Book 1 is an epic start to what is going to be a spectacular series and not to be missed!!
Joel Richards does a fantastic job with the narration of Marshal the Stars. He has a clear and concise voice that is easy to understand. He does a great range of both male and female voices for his characters. His male voices are brilliant, with his voice for the MC being particularly good in this deep, gritty voice that really gives you a good idea of the character of the Commander. Whilst his female voices are not overtly ‘feminine’ (and I mean that they are not particularly high pitched etc), I do feel that Richards does a really fantastic job of creating his female characters so that they are clearly female and each character has a distinctive voice.
Every character in the story had a different voice allowing you to clearly identify who was talking without having to be told which made it really easy to understand as you listened.
Further to this, Richards does an outstanding job of providing us with the emotional state of the characters, so we understand how they feel in any given situation, such as Grady being terrified when he meets Charli the first time, or Charli being angry. Charli’s character is just brilliant in her Pricolici form, and the emotion between Charli and Katy is hilarious at points. This voice acting just adds a whole extra layer to the story, making it so much better.
This is one of those books in which the Narrator adds something to the story, and it is better to listen to than read it!!

From boring to annoying

Based on the summary, I came into this story expecting a Maverick-esque irreverent character who's rough around the edges, but competent and likable.

I got that. For maybe five minutes.

Then he turned into a bland, obedient soldierboy.

This is where the story turned boring.

I found the supporting cast boring too, and childish - and not in an endearing way,

I put down the book with about an hour left (too far for me to return with good conscious, despite really wanting to), because the book went from boring to annoying.

I hate incompetent protagonists. I need a basic level of competence or I just completely check out of a story, and while the floor for that is pretty high in fairness, I think this clown crashes through that and lands somewhere in the basement.

Aside from tuning up an arrogant student in the first five minutes of the story, Beau does nothing but be an exposition bot and give orders. At no point do I cheer or even care about him. If you're going to be a boring story, at least have a badass protagonist.

Instead I got a boring story with an annoying protagonist.

I won't be continuing with this series.