Metal Boxes

By: Alan Black

Narrated by: Doug Tisdale Jr.

Coming of age can be hard for anyone. But for Blackmon Perry Stone it is life threatening. At 15, he barely manages to graduate from the empire's cadet training by a talent for unusual problem solving. He has trouble settling into navy life, but life becomes harder when he uncovers a ring of thieves aboard the huge ship. Life becomes difficult when they killed him.

Stone is ejected into hyperspace in an escape pod without hyperspace engines. Fully expecting to die, he reconfigures the sub-light engine to escape the inescapable. To his surprise it works, but only well enough to do little more than crash on an uncharted planet. It will surprise him if he can make the engine work again, but not as much as it will surprise everyone else if he can come back from the dead.

©2010 Alan Black (P)2016 Alan Black

Enjoyable book with bad narration

So I will preface this that I really do like the story and most of the characters. Both the story and characters are fun and somewhat interesting if very predictable. My issues come from the clunky writing that is compounded by pretty bad narration. I am aware that many reviewers have already mentioned it by the dialogue seems clunky due to lack of contractions used in dialogue. This problem is further compounded by the narrator picking a really really annoying voice for the protagonist that grates on my nerves.
I also have to take issue with how the main character comes off in the story, obviously he’s a sheltered 16 year old kid with very little experience and is bad at math, that’s established from the beginning. But at so many points, especially when it comes to the military procedure that he should have learned in officer school, he comes off as so naive that I often question his intelligence. I get that he’s supposed to be our audience surrogate and that in many professions both civilian and military there are unspoken rules, but he should know most if not all of the stuff he is confused by from the beginning. He’s obviously supposed to be a smart kid who may not be socially or mathematically inclined but he often comes off as needing every single small thing explained to him.
That combined with the clunky dialogue and narration makes a fine book hard to enjoy.

Surprisingly better than the previous review on this book

I had wrongly allowed the audible negative review to prevent me from purchasing the book. In my opinion, the negative criticism was taken out of context.
The audible book I heard was well read and entertaining. I am always amazed by the talent of the people who read these books and bring the action and adventure as well as the comedy to life in my mind. Unlike movies, this book uses the unlimited power of the imagination.
It would be appropriate for advanced high school audiences. I'm much older than that and enjoyed the story. I did not hear excessive sex.

Cute Fantastical Junk-Food

This book is cute, fantastical junk-food reading. That’s not exactly a bad thing, but you should know that going into it.

1. The protagonist is too infallible; 16 years old, and doesn’t mess anything up except cultural blunders from ignorance throughout the entire book.

2. While technically an interstellar book, and it being a major theme, it doesn’t really fall into the hard sci-fi realm; not even close. Even the author keeps making cracks about how few people “get hyperspace”.

3. The writing is so fluffy it makes me groan all too often. This is a short-coming but more along the lines of, let’s keep this Ultra-G-Rated, not intolerable censorship strangling the plot potential.

4. The most developed characters in the book can’t even speak; I’ll let that speak for itself. Badum-tsh!

5. This is pretty much completely kid-safe. I don’t think I ran across any profanity or even directly addressing sex or illicit drugs. Alluded to, yes, but not spoken about outright. However, I’d caution against giving this to children. You’ll probably bore them, and give them a crushing life-long inferiority complex when compared to Midshipman Blackman Perry Stone.

Please, think of the children.

Wonk!

Ok for a teen Sci-Fi

This is NOT an adult sci-fi book. The plot is ok, but overly simplistic. The main character is fleshed out very well, but all the other characters are under developed.

The narration is as simple as the book. Tisdale's vocal thespian chops don't seem to extend beyond making his characters sound old or young. You can only tell a tense situation by the author's written description since Tisdale seems to have only one emotion setting in this narration.

Overall the book was ok, but I will hesitate before purchasing another by either the author or narrator.

Not a Space Opera

A twist an the Space Opera theme. Worth a good read or listen. give it a try.