Rules of Redemption

Firebird Chronicles Series, Book 1

By: T. A. White

Narrated by: Natasha Soudek

Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's Summary

The war everyone thought was over is just beginning.

Kira Forrest is a survivor. She's risen above the pain of her beginnings to become a war hero only to leave it all behind in the pursuit of a simple life. Now a salvager, she makes a living sifting through the wreckage of dead alien ships from a war that nearly brought humanity to its knees.

After her ship takes damage, she's forced to re-route to a space station where her past and present collide with dangerous consequences.

Kira's existence holds the key to a faltering peace treaty with the Tuann - a technologically advanced alien race who dislikes and distrusts all humans. Winning her freedom should be easy, but a powerful and relentless Tuann warrior stands in her way. Deceiving him seems impossible, especially when he strays dangerously close to secrets she struggles to hide.

Can Kira reconcile the pain of her past with the possibilities of her future? The fate of two races depends on her success.

©2019 T. A. White (P)2019 Tantor

Enjoyable!!

Great Listen. I enjoyed the story, the characters, the sarcasm, the action and the last but certainly not least, the narration.

Great story, disappointing narration

I am a big fan of T A White's books, and love the audiobook versions of her Broken Lands series. I was looking forward to enjoying the same experience when listening to Rules of Redemption, but am very disappointed by the narration. While Ms Soudek has a pleasant enough tone through the general reading, her characterizations lack emotional expression in my opinion. The "voice" she used for Greydon made him sound like a villain rather than the male romantic lead to me and I couldn't warm to him at all. In fact, I haven't been able to listen to the whole book because of the voicing of the characters. Sadly, while I normally enjoy revisiting my favourite reads through audio books, I won't be purchasing further audio versions of this series without a change in narrator...

Good book, really wrong narrator

Groan! This is one of the few books that is sadly lessened by a poorly narrated or produced audio. Done right, it could have definitely moved a good book up a level.
Soudek has a pleasant voice, but sounds like a 38-50 year old suburban housewife who is half asleep and IN NO WAY fits the dynamic Kira. On top of that FUBAR, Soudek just doesn’t have the range of character voices. I can’t tell if she was going for Zombie Apocalypse or Witches Coven for the Luathan dialect !?!? Then so much of the narrative was read in a kind of monotone that blurred multiple sentences. I had to keep backtracking sections to see if I could figure out if the audio was keeping to the book. And did I mention the mispronunciations?

Do yourself a favor and READ IT IN KINDLE. I liked it a lot, and have read it through twice, some sections more.
Recommend ebook, NOT the audio.

Doormat MC and Absurd Power Dynamics

It takes an a special type of book to earn a one star review from me. A book has to be good enough that I listen to it and hope it will get better. Yet it has to also fail so spectacularly that I not only want to return it but feel an obligation to warn off others. This book did it.

How do you ruin a cool premise, interesting world, and classic motif? By creating unbearable characters and having a plot that makes no sense.

The biggest problem with this story is that the main character is an absolute doormat while at the same time being an unkillable elite supersoldier. It is bearable at first because the supporting cast isn't all bad but it keeps gets worse and worse as the book goes on until I finally broke in the first 30 minutes of book 2. It ruins all the interactions which have the main character assuming the child role in the lost child motif.

There are a bunch of smaller issues, soapiness, little logical inconsistencies, naivety of all the characters, that might be bearable. Don't be fooled.

Wow just wow

This is one of the best books I have listened to this year and I have listened to many many books. I am a huge fan of Ilona Andrews, Faith Hunter, Patricia Briggs, etc. and this is on par with them. I am looking forward to the next book.

Exciting story, Brilliant Narration

I absolutely loved it! The story is exciting and the characters wonderful.... and the narrator was brilliant. I got totally lost in her voices and didn’t want the book to end! Best science fiction narration I’ve ever heard, and best science fiction book starring a powerful female character, too! Should be a movie! Thanks, T.A. And Natasha for an exhilarating ride!

Write quickly!! Need 2nd book ASAP!

Loved the world you’re building super interesting only thing is descriptions of ppl/aliens. I still don’t have a clear picture in my head if anyone except horn guys...I read/listen to 100s of books and am very excited to continue this series. Also pathfinders series was great too!

Great Story - Terrible Narrator

I have read and enjoyed all the stories by this author and was looking forward to listening to this book. However the narrator is just terrible. It sounds like she is reading a book in front of a group of 8 year olds at the library. I would love to hear the rest of this author's books in audible, but not using this narrator.

Amazing book, terrible narrator

Since I found the first Pathfinder book I've made my way through all of T.A. White's series and I think the firebird chronicles might be my favourite.

White is especially good at slowly unravelling the mystery of the heroine's past.

However, I highly recommend getting this book in paperback or ebook form. The narrator is easily the worst I've ever heard. She can't do male voices and she often sounds like she has a dry mouth. And there are small things like peoplewho speak Japanese and working for Himoto pronouncing his name as Himodo.

But there are two things that completely ruin the narration for me. First, she regularly puts the emphasis on the wrong word in the sentence.

And second, she treats full stops like commas. Because of thos, most senrences kind of trail off like she was expecting more to come.

I don't think you'll enjoy the book as much if you listen to it, which is a pity, because the story is wonderful.

wonderful story and Horrible narration

I understand when authors are just starting they don't have the same ability to pay for the quality narration. I tried so hard to keep that in mind as this author is truly talented and I love this book. After hearing the same voice for three different male characters I was no longer able to sink into the story. The female narrator did an extremely poor imitation of a male voice in a constant growly tone.

Hot Damn!

Action! A kickass heroine! Serious intrigue! A plot that twists and turns! An author who keeps a hot pace while slowly doling out info bombs that change the playing field. A budding romance that doesn't control the plot. If I wore a wig, this book would have blown it off!

Gimme some more!

Amazing 😍

Oh my god I absolutely loved this book! I loved it so much I immediately went and brought the second one in the series! I couldn’t put this down and listened to it within 2 days!! This is the second book of this author and I have to say I’m really enjoying how the female characters Are written, there strong and confident but realistic as they all seem to have slight imperfections which makes them even more likeable. The world she creates is so vivid with lots of details And you can easily imagine it. The narrator did a wonderful job on the characters and you could really feel there personality coming out while she’s reading it. It has easily become one of my favourites.
I recommend it 100 times over!

Only one negative.

There's really only one thing not perfect in this performance: graydans voice. Sounds like a 100 year old smoker.

Loved this, great story, well narrated

I know this book well, read it and the next two several times, and am impatiently waiting for book 4, so I knew what I was letting myself in for. I couldn't find anything new I wanted to listen to, and this book was gently knocking at my brain letting me know a re-read was needed, so I decided to listen instead. It's really well narrated, although I worried about the narrator's throat, she makes Graydon so gruff - it'll be interesting to see if she keeps it up for the next one (already downloaded!). This author writes good books, with fine leading ladies, but Kira is my favourite.

Here's my Amazon review from 3 years ago:
This is good - it catches the attention from the off and never drops. Heroine is a capable, intelligent, resourceful woman - and I mean woman, she’s a veteran with a troubling history who’s been around a bit. There were echoes of the authors Aileen Travers novels for me - in both books the main character is a loner, forced by circumstance, and things she can’t control, into co-operating/working with people she really would rather not.

This is, as another reviewer has said, sci-fi lite. The nice aliens are utterly humanoid as far as I can make out, while the nasty aliens are not. There’s no detail on how space travel is undertaken, no FTL drives, or jumps - Kira is technically capable, ably assisted by Jin, but we don’t hear much of the detail. I thought the razor dust was a neat idea!

There’s some good and well described world building, there are powerful people who manipulate others for their own, or higher, ends, there are old colleagues with grudges, questions and long memories, there are snotty arrogant Tuann, with some maybe not as bad as the others. There’s a big cast of characters here, and I did lose track a bit at times of who was human, who was Tuann, who was friendly and who wasn’t. A cast of characters would have been handy.

There aren’t any friends, apart from Jin, and he has his limitations, so Kira is very alone, not helped by her determination to not get close, not get involved, and to make her escape back to her solitary, scavenger life. Yes there are old colleagues from what used to be a cohesive team, but Kira left them, and they’re pi**ed with her.

Kira has a big secret that isn’t revealed until quite near the end. There are vague hints, but nothing to really sign post what’s to come. There’s one of those James Bond moments where the baddies are chortling about how now they’ve caught someone they really, really want, they’re going to kill them. The executioner is all lined up, but with all the gloating and chortling, a fairly credulity stretching escape is effected - using the big secret reveal, and giving me a "What the...?" moment. But it really doesn’t matter - by that stage you’re whooping them all on! I was wondering, towards the very end, how the author was going to deal with the circumstances she’d created, but she does, of course. She's the author!

Good storyline (in need of a cruel editor)

Really like sci fi and alien smut. This mixer is a bit too painful to enjoy though. The narrator not doing it any favors, good voice for some females and children, horrendous for the rest. The text not being the stories best friend either at times. Too much of repeating simple story plots, arrogance in surprising places, juvenile smugness pasted all over the heroine, overall too many things not adding up and sentences even opposing each other. The bones of the story are however wonderful. And I like how more information about the past is slowly integrated into the story, often changing the overall picture drastically, all while new characters and new plots are introduced. So, even if this audio is painfully annoying, I have bought the rest of the series. Haven´t found that much of a really good storyline elsewhere to bring myself to forgo this one. And who doesn´t need a practice in holding back on pressing the delete button? Plus, adversity is said to be character building. A new author to me. Wish she had a better narrator and a more cruel editor.

Wow

T A White has done it again another great read . Love the story this one is a keeper If you like a good book with plenty of action then this is the book for you

Great book cannot wait for more

Having listened avidly to this book and been thoughrouly transfixed by the story I cannot wait for the sequel as the writer has left me suspended in air in anticipation of the continuing story line. I do hope that audible produces the next chapter and eagerly wait its publication. I can honestly recommend this book to any avid science fiction fan it is a fascinating listen.

Loved this book!

I enjoyed T.A. White’s Pathfinder series, but I think I liked this book even more. Looking forward to more books in the series.