Orders of Battle

Frontlines, Book 7

By: Marko Kloos

Narrated by: Eric G. Dove

Length: 8 hrs and 13 mins

Publisher's Summary

The battle against the Lankies has been won. Earth seems safe. Peacetime military? Not on your life.

It’s been four years since Earth threw its full military prowess against the Lanky incursion. Humanity has been yanked back from the abyss of extinction. The solar system is at peace. For now. 

The future for Major Andrew Grayson of the Commonwealth Defense Corps and his wife, Halley? Flying desk duty on the front. No more nightmares of monstrous things. No more traumas to the mind and body. But when an offer comes down from above, Andrew has to make a choice: continue pushing papers into retirement, or jump right back into the fight? What’s a podhead to do?

The remaining Lankies may have retreated in fear, but the threat isn’t over. They need to be wiped out for good before they strike again. That’ll take a new offensive deployment. Aboard an Avenger warship, Andrew and the special tactics team under his command embark on the ultimate search-and-destroy mission. This time, it’ll be on Lanky turf.

No big heroics. No unnecessary risks. Just a swift hit-and-run raid in the hostile Capella system. Blow the alien seed ships into oblivion and get the hell back to Earth. At least, that’s the objective. But when does anything in war go according to plan?

©2020 Marko Kloos. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Don't buy this book.

This is a great series with a top tier narrator. Luke Daniels is probably one of the five best narrators on Audible. Eric Dove does a perfectly good job of narrating himself, but there's no good reason he should be reading this book. We've spent six books with Luke Daniels bringing these characters to life. Having that suddenly change is impossible for me to get past. Especially when I preordered this and learned of the change with my own ears when I struggled to identify who was even talking. I've given it a few hours now, but the characters still feel like strangers.

I'd like to ask why the narrator was switched before posting a review this negative, but unfortunately Marko Kloos has chosen to isolate himself from the internet, so I can only make my own assumptions as to what happened. Doing this seems like a silly reason for Marko to lose a bunch of fans, but that's his choice I guess. I personally won't continue to purchase his books if he's going to switch around narrators like this. Disappointing.

Don’t fix it if it’s not broke

The narrator is just awful. I listen to about 10 minutes of this and decided I’m not going to finish. Very disappointed. This is the last time I will buy any audiobook before it’s released. If I had waited and had a chance to Play a sample I would never have bought this book.

Times are a changin....

I’m about an hour in, I’ve already read the book via kindle, read the whole book with Luke Daniels voice in my head. Dove’s interpretation isn’t awful, honestly, if he had voiced the whole series, wouldn’t haven’t even noticed. Just Luke D. is so hard to follow up from.

My only serious complaint is Dove’s pacing, feels like he’s rushing everything.

New narrator is fine.

This book is getting hit with so-so reviews because the new narrator is . . . new. That's it.

That's what everyone is so twisted up about.

It's a change, but Eric Dove does a great job of keeping the patter and phrasing that Luke Daniels created in the previous novels. That's important to note because, to me, it shows that a decent level of care and vigilance was taken to preserve the environment that the previous narrator worked to create.

Eric didn't come in and reinvent how the characters talk. The language and cadence are still familiar. Part of that comes down to the writing, but part of it is that someone took the time to treat the existing universe with care.

Eric's voice is a higher register than Daniels; it took about an hour to get used to.

The writing is still the same. The characters are still the same. The story is still good. And the performance is top-notch, even if it's not the old narrator.

Don't avoid this book just because of a logistical change. It's still the same characters, the same universe, and the same writer.

Good stuff all around.

I feel betrayed

Didn’t get through the first ten minutes. Cant do it. Luke Daniels has made this world with his voice and brought it to life. Zero explanation as to why the narrator has changed. Is Luke dead? Not that I can tell based on his website. I’m sure this new guy is normally good with others he’s narrated, but he’s an imposter in a series I’ve listened to several times now. Money wasted. I’ll be returning this one.

Andrew Grayson deserved better.

Orders of Battle, you grind my gears. I have been a major fan of this series for years, and I guarantee that if you listen/read all the others you will be very happy. To the point; this book should have been tossed by editing. Andrew and Haley get no character development, having some new faces added to the crew that bring in connections to old faces basically are pointless. This must have been a ghost writer because I would never have expected Marko to pull the “which branch of the military should I join?” “F that kid, don’t” line with the three time defending champ of the galaxy. Which sums up this book, you gave up on us boss. All these hours waiting for our main man to find the Lanky queen and stuff it up her egg sack, and you sent us on an uneventful “not a milk run” that confirms only that Andrew feels old, disgruntled and just as salty at the time skip and lack of action as this book left me. Eric did an average job, but his style of diction does not hit anywhere close to military Sci-fi. He managed to do a couple of voices justice but if your gonna get picked up this late in the game, get the Main Characters voice right. Overall Marko left me waiting for something that never came (anything remotely similar to the action and suspense of any of the other books), and slightly saddened at how the hero of our story sounds regretful of his past. Please don’t do this to us, it hurts to be treated like this.

Didn't like initially, but it grew on me (edited)

(I have revised my review, edit is at the bottom)

Release day, have had the book pre-ordered for a while and was looking forward to listening. I'll give this a solid hour of listening before I decide if I return it or slog through this mess.

Within the first 5 minutes, I kinda feel like I wasted my money. I'm sure this new guy is an overall decent narrator normally, but it seems like a really bad choice for the last book in a series with an already established narrator.

I think one of the biggest detriments has to do with the audio quality in and of itself. Was this recorded inside of a can? The guy sounds really muffled and tinny. Not only that, but the initial pacing seems pretty well "off" from the usual entries in the series.

I'll update when I've listened more, but I'm not really happy at this moment.


Edit:
The initial start was pretty jarring. The new narrator thing really threw me off.
After an hour or so though, that lessened dramatically.
The story is still solid, but I've still got quibbles about the overall audio quality.
I re-downloaded it and used my phone speaker, Beats headphones, regular earbuds, and car audio. Every method still sounds tinny and muffled. The previous books did not have that issue. Unsure of its just a bad file or things haven't been properly cleaned up in post.

The new narrator isn't terrible. Some of the voices still seem off to me, but if he keeps at this, I'm sure he'll tweak things as needed.
As for pacing, I found that dropping the playback speed to just .9 is sufficient to correct at least my perception of the speed differences between the narrators.

Unfinished

This new instalment in the Frontline series is a disepointment. It seem quite unfinished and the whole book is to short. This is the direction of books on audible, short, to get the most profit out of it. The reader is also not the best, and for anyone who has followed the series upuntill now, the change of artist has not been a change for the better.
Disepointing, the whole thing is just so dispointing. Not worth your credit, and not worth your money.

Audio Book Series Rule #1

If it’s a hit, don’t change anything! For example, the NARRATOR!

Don’t get me wrong, Dove is a great narrator but after six books, Luke Daniels makes the characters. It’s the equivalent to changing the lead actor in a movie series. That only works in Bond films and even that is debatable. Sir Sean Connery Rest In Peace.

Overall good story, my only gripe is with not scheduling... waiting on.... paying enough for... I don’t know... Luke Daniels.

Over before it started

Ends in what feels like the middle. Wasn’t that entertaining, not bad, but it will be a while before I listen to it again.

Author should feel ashamed

I’ve two huge complaints about this series. The duration between books and the new narrator.

Firstly, I wouldn’t suggest starting this series on a number of issues, including the ridiculous waiting times between books. 8hours of content a year is pathetic.

I also ask Marko Kloss a few months back why he changed narrator and I was told that Luke Daniels had a huge waiting list but I find that ironic seeing he doesn’t mind us waiting a year but 8hours!!!!!

Another reason for the narrator change was down to cost which I find pathetic on a number of levels.

So please do not buy this amazing series because you will be left disappointed not by the story but by the person behind the book.

A rear-echelon attempt at a Frontline novel

Orders of Battle is a half a workhorse novel in an excellent series, and as such it feels sadly incomplete. The author is not known for his rapid output, but previous novels have at least been complete (if short) novels.

As ever, this is a refreshing, if not novel approach to military special operations science fiction, which is to its credit. But some of the uniqueness of the characters are lost now that they continue to rehash old issues, despite a decade having gone past. This is not aided by the cliched ‘I’m so old!’ at age 30 from the main character. I guess it’s appropriate, we all do it, but I don’t know anyone who found twenty to twenty five year old people ‘horribly young’ at that age. This also feels disconnected to the rest of the series.

We get another good look at new technology and more on the Avenger-class vessels, but this entire series has focused on one ‘trick’ per book - and that’s starting to get old with this many novels.

This is all made both better (there’s more to come!) and worse (… oh god, why end on a pointless cliffhanger) - I understand the author constrains his writing time, but that’s no excuse for dragging a narrative out across two books and two years. Such behaviour has fallen out of favour in the industry, and long may it be so.

The audio recording quality leaves a lot to be desired Eric Dove makes a sterling attempt to sound like Luke Daniels, but he’s severely hampered by the awful quality of the mic setup he’s using - someone buy that man a basic USB mic like the Blue Yeti and show him how to use Audacity! I can, and have made home recordings with more sound range with just that setup than the quality delivered. Audiobooks are expensive, except at Audible ‘locked in’ prices - and that business model is potentially fraught with danger of loss of access to purchase. I expect that a voice talent be able to at least provide a full range of sound.

I have however not dropped Mr Dove’s effort below three stars because he does make a genuine effort to voice the same characters in a similar way to Mr Daniels, and plenty of other narrators don’t - hopefully with more time and better kit available future recordings will be better.

To sum up: An average novel that is too short, with a good attempt at recording let down by the quality of hardware and software. Recommended for fans of the series only, otherwise the next book simply won’t make sense.

Love the book and universe created by Marko but...

The performance of the audio book sounds like it was recorded on £5 microphone bought from Ebay... Its awful... Its got no Bass or mid range and all tinney, it's a difficult thing to listen to. All the other books have been great stories and a pleasure to listen to...
Very disappointing

Feels like half a story

Feels like half a story, not a lot happens and just as it's starting to get interesting it stops. it's like the producers realised they could sell an extra book if they cut the book in half, disappointing. Love the other books but the last few seem to be padding and going nowhere. The be narrator is ok, didn't like the charge at first but within the first hour I'd gotten used to it.

Wished it was a bit longer

I know that the 8th book in the series will likely carry on with the story but couldn’t help but feel that it was cut short at the end.

Still recommend the book for any fan of the frontlines series

Good but abrupt ending

The story and writing is good but it ended when I thought Act 2 was just done and Act 3 and 4 was remaining. Almost felt a bit cheated, like I bought half a story without knowing it.

Loved it

Another great book as usuall, I love this series and cant't wait tor another, not very cool that the narrator has changed tho, but he still did very awesome job and I honestly even forgot that it's diferent at times.

New narrator is fine, story is too short.

I know it is annoying when the narrator changes, but Eric Dove does a fine job. However, the novel is way too short and just stops mid-plotline. I really enjoy the books, but you do get the sense that Marko Kloos does not know where to go or how to finish the series.

Brilliant as usual but too short

Brilliant as usual, but felt like we barely touched the surface on the main plotline, too much filler and not enough progress. I suspect the next book will conclude the end of this one's storyline, but with the amount of filler it would have been better wrapped into one book, specially with the gap in publishing between both.

Disappointing, great story line,very abrupt ending

Overall great story, really enjoyed the series so far so much so that i had this on pre-order for a long time. the new narratorI was fine with, but the story seemed to just end unexpectedly? was the done intentionally to keep us readers interested or just to make us pay for another book? Really disappointed with the ending of the story, but I will read the next book to find out more.