Inferno Station

Helltroopers, Book 1

By: Isaac Stone

Narrated by: Persephone Rose

Length: 4 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

Ash Wednesday and his crew of corporate space marines take work as bounty hunters tasked with taking down the deadly fugitive named Simon Haddo, a mad scientist with an occult obsession and the most infamous terrorist in the system. As they track him through the depths of a gruesome space station the mercs of Team Omega soon find themselves drawn into a galactic conspiracy bent on creating a literal hell on earth in this violent sci-fi remix of Dante's Inferno. Strap on your power armor and get ready to fight like hell.

©2017 Isaac Stone (P)2017 Isaac Stone

A sci-fi remake of Dante’s Inferno

Ash Wednesday and his crew constitute the Omega Team, a private enterprise hired by corporates as bounty hunters. After rescuing an android by a ship taken by pirates, they are assigned a new mission: finding Simon Haddo and taking him alive. There is an unproportionate bounty for this subject, and Ash fears that hunting him down will be more difficult than usual.

This book is a remake of Dante’s Inferno, a poem written in the 14-century. I always like when the classics are rescued and transformed into sci-fi. I have grown up with ‘Ulysses 31‘, and that may be part of why I like what I do nowadays.

In the prologue the author warns us about the fact that as this is based on and old poem it may not follow the modern structure we are used to in books. With that said, I did not feel that as a detriment of the whole story.

The atmosphere of this book reminded me a lot of shows like ‘Firefly‘ or ‘Dark Matter‘, but this time our main characters were on the right side of the law. For the rest, it seemed quite similar. The crew was formed by seven people, which seemed a bit excessive for a book of this length. We got intros for all characters, but due to the length of the book there was little character developing and evolution. It is a pity, since this would have made it a 5-star book.

Ash and his crew have to go to Inferno Station, where they will have to tread across the different levels like Dante in the original. They find different challenges that make the advancement risky and difficult. I found a couple of these a bit confusing, so I think more accurate descriptions would have been a nice addition.

Persephone Rose’s narration was superb! Narrating a book with seven different characters, an android, and an AI, is not an easy task but Rose has managed to create a different voice and style for each of them. He also transmitted well the character’s emotions and emphasized some parts where it was needed. Rose also used some sound effects to enrich the narration. The introduction and ‘From the author’ had some background music. I do not find this essential but this is just a personal opinion. The only setback I found was two sentences repeated towards the end of the book (3:21:17 and 3:53:18). It is a pity, since without this it would have been a 5-star narration.

Despite being this a relatively short book I have really enjoyed it, and I am ready for the next installments.
I received a copy of this book in audio format from the narrator in exchange for an honest review.

Started out strange but got way better

I admit. It took me a while to get into this story. I stopped and started many times. After about the half way point, I started really getting into the story. The narrator did a wonderful job. I received this audiobook for free through Audiobook Boom for my unbiased review.

Holy info dump batman.

Liked the idea the execution was lacking. Too much monologuing and unrealistic military decisions for a team of "professional" mercs.

Dante's great work as a sci fi epic!

Dante's great work has been converted here to a sci fi epic. Never crossed my mind but now that it has its wonderful. There are two more parts and I can't wait to listen to them. The author and narrator combined for and amazing work of literary artwork that will amaze you, hook you and leave you waiting for more. I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.

Dante's Inferno with a sci-fi twist.

I like the concept of the book more than the execution. Dante's Inferno in space sounds quite cool, and part of the book are a blast, but it's not consistent. The book suffers from inconsistent pacing, with a number of slow downs where the author gives info dumps related to the backstory for a number of the characters, which IMO are completely unnecessary. None of the backstories serve any real purpose to the action of the story, it's information for information's sake, having no real impact on the story itself. And even though it's clear from the outset that this is only the first book in a series, it still felt a bit anticlimactic at the end. There's an interesting story here, but it could definitely benefit from some pruning.

The narration of this book, provided by the very coolly named Persephone Rose, was quite good. He definitely brought the story to life and you could tell he enjoyed his work. He really got into the story, and at times it reminded me of someone telling a story around a campfire, especially the scene that involved the cerebrus, you could just hear the excitement in his voice.

If half stars were allowed I'd have given it an overall of 3.5, but because half stars aren't allowed, and Persephone's performance was so enjoyable, I rounded up in the overall category.

Random note: There are at least three spots where lines are repeated. I assume this was an error in the sound editing. Doesn't ruin the experience, but it was noticeable so I figured I'd mention it.

I received a copy of this audio title for free in exchange for an unbiased review.

Dante's inferno with space, Robots and AI

Where does Inferno Station rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Inferno station ranks about the middle of the pack. The story was engaging, the writing was decent but it did not really suck me in as a great book will. I did find the new take on Dante's Inferno to be really interesting and I think the author did a great job of tellling the tale in a completely new setting.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Inferno Station?

Though it is before much has happened the level of detail and style of writing used to describe when Barbara Anne comes aboard the ship for the first time caught my attention and intrigue.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Even in the coldness of space Hell exists.

Any additional comments?

This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

It's ok.

I liked the idea but the execution lacked for me. The story was a little muddied and confusing in places. Tried to get into it but just wasn't for me.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Didn't work for me.

What did you like best about Inferno Station? What did you like least?

I like the idea of taking a classic and doing a modern spin on it. Thus, the premise of this book had me quite interested. Having been introduced to "Dante's Inferno" via Dan Brown's novel (sorry :P) and then doing my own research on that classic book, I was super stoked about this spin. Sadly, the way this book told the tale, it didn't quite work for me and I was largely disappointed. There were parts where I was confused about what's going on and there were parts where I didn't care what happened. Apart from the two main characters, the other characters didn't have anything significant to contribute, essentially making it a two-man-show.

Any additional comments?

I received this audiobook for free from the author / narrator / publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

Space Marines in Hell

Any additional comments?

This space marine sci-fi is an action packed adventure with a cast of characters you'd want in your scifi, including my favorite, the android Barbara Ann. I'm a sucker for androids.
Persephone Rose's narration reminded me of a cross between Will Wheaton and William Dufris, the talented narrator from Asimov's robot series. Persephone does an excellent job giving each character a distinct voice and unique mannerism so they are easily distinguishable, leading to the believabilty an enjoyability of the audiobook.

Nice concept, but a bit rushed...

The idea for Inferno Station is a good one, but for me Isaac Stone rushes through the scenes a tad too quickly to make this book fizz in the way that it should.

As the team descend the levels of Inferno Station, it would be good to fully understand the correlation between the structure itself, the challenge the team are facing, their emotions and Dante's Inferno specifically. I just felt it hovered over detail that would have really extended the storyline and dragged me into the minds of the people involved.

Overall though, I thought is was a good story and enjoyed the experience.

My thanks to the author, narrator and publisher as this audiobook was provided to me free of charge in return for an unbiased review.