Mage-Provocateur

Starship's Mage: Red Falcon, Book 2

By: Glynn Stewart

Narrated by: Hillary Huber

Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

Vengeance hunts them.
Rebellion seeks them.
Loyalty commands them.
The shadows will fear them.

Captain David Rice and Mage Maria Soprano have made their choice, signing up with the Martian Interstellar Security Agency and converting Red Falcon into a covert operations ship for the Protectorate.

Their new duties drag them back into the very underworld they once strove to escape, intentionally provoking the Azure Legacy into a renewed conflict. They find unexpected allies with secret agents from Legatus’s rebellion against Mars as they seek to stop Mikhail Azure’s Blue Star Syndicate from being reborn.

The Azure Legacy wants revenge. Legatus wants blood. David and Maria are bound by the overriding duty of all officers of the Mage-King’s Protectorate: protect the innocent.

©2018 Faolan's Pen Publishing Inc. (P)2018 Faolan's Pen Publishing Inc.

Captain Rice is in trouble again!

Great Audio! The Narrator is capable in bring forth emotion. I found the story to be captivating.

Another great story in the series, bad narrator.

Would you listen to Mage-Provocateur again? Why?

yes, but it would not be my first choice.

Would you be willing to try another one of Hillary Huber’s performances?

For a non-fiction book, yes. She can't handle male voices well, everything else is fine but she doesn't do a good quality male voice.

Any additional comments?

The third book should have a different narrator. The entire trilogy should have a different narrator. Jeffrey Kafer is a better narrator.

PLEASE learn how things are pronounced!

God... please do the basic work of learning what the established pronunciation of words/names is when you start voicing an ongoing series that already has multiple books. EVERY SINGLE TIME Legatus was said I wanted to just kill the book and refund, especially when it comes up many times in a paragraph and just grinds the whole time.

Book 2, still four stars in my opinion...

I enjoyed the story, but felt it slow at times, and not as full of action as the previous series. Again, the narrator was changed, which is not acceptable to me.

Additionally, in my opinion, the narrator, while good, did not fit this book. Also, I felt she did not capture a male voice very well.

The narrator change has saved the series

The first book in the Red Falcon series was plagued by some of the worst narrators I've ever heard. Luckily, the author listened to feedback, and replaced them with Hillary Huber, who is great. That has saved the series for me as I wouldn't have been able to listen to another one with the old narrators, and I doubt I would get around to reading the book in text form. Huber makes the characters her own and brings the professionalism of a good narrator to the series, which it deserves.

As for the story, this series will always be in the shadow of the main series, and I don't think that can - or needs to be - fixed. It's still an excellent series on its own, and well worth the read. This book moves the series forwards, which Stewart seems to be very good at doing (compared to author scifi authors whose series go five books between any major developments). Red Falcon and its crew are slowly filling in blanks left by the main series, as well as filling in the blanks of how interstellar operations function in the SM universe when you don't have a hand...handy...get it? It develops both characters and entities (agencies, syndicates, whatever) further, adding depth.

Good book, but.

It was a great book, but I did not like the narrator. Why did you change from the original two to this one? also why did you change the pronunciation of certain people and certain groups?

finally

Stewart finally picked a good reader. if you have been reading instead of listening because his choaen narrators were aso bad, now is your chance to get the audiobook. Huber does a good job narrating this story and I finally got to really enjoy a Starship Mage book.

great story

You should listen to this author and series if you're a fan of Doctor who Babylon 5 Battlestar Galactica. Glynn Stewart is as good as Issac Asimov.

Polygamy? Homosexuality? Why?

The plot of this book is not very exciting. There was potential for some good things to happen but nothing remarkable ever developed.

I love the Starships Mage Universe. The magic, simulacrum chamber, space travel, government themes are rich. Those ideas give this universe the potential to compete with the big stars in the space race, Star Wars and Star Trek.
One problem is that the writer is limited by political interests. Glynn Stewart never fails to sprinkle in homosexuality, and in this book he adds polygamy. Neither of these adds anything to the story. The attempt is to make it seem natural by casually making a character here or there homosexual but nothing is gained by these additions. It disrupts the flow of the book if anything.

I love Glynn Stewart but..,

I love Glynn Stewart and enjoyed Hillary Huber in the Duchess series. However this reading and this story are NOT a good match. I am not sure if it is the story or the reader. I want to enjoy it but don’t. Wish I had spent my credit on something else.