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Getting caught between a local crime boss and a galactic syndicate makes you nostalgic for the rock and the hard place. Carl Ramsey has a heist to run and the crew to pull it off. All he's missing is a specialized computer and the tech to run it. But when an unrelated robbery loses him both, the prospects for a successful job look grim. Unfortunately the one who hired them won't take excuses, and the owners of the computer come looking for their stolen gear.
Meet the galaxy's unluckiest outlaws. Carl Ramsey is an ex-Earth Navy fighter pilot turned con man. His ship, the Mobius, is home to a ragtag crew of misfits and refugees looking to score a big payday but more often just scratching to pay for fuel. The crew consists of his ex-wife (and pilot), a drunkard, four-handed mechanic, a xeno-predator with the disposition of a 120kg housecat, and the galaxy's most-wanted wizard.
Control dinosaurs. Tame women. Rule the world. Victor Shelby and his tribe of beautiful alien women have built a fortress to keep themselves safe, but when they encounter another tribe of survivors, Victor must leverage his dinosaur-taming abilities to negotiate either peace or violence. And violence is what Dinosaurland is all about.
When you are old enough to finally become an Earth Mars citizen, everything should be perfect. Right? Not for Liam Hoffen. He's stuck on a mining asteroid called Colony 40, helping his father work a claim that is never going to pay out. His best friend, Nick James is set for life in James' Rental business and Liam just discovered that the girl he's known forever thinks he's pretty great and now she's leaving for the Mars Naval Academy.
Kyrus Hinterdale is about to get drawn into a conflict. His discovery that the world in his dreams is real, and that his twin within that world dreams of him, sets him off on a quest of self-discovery that could reshape two worlds. He is not alone with this special vision. Others like him had been at it far longer, working secret plots and stealing secrets from one world to take advantage in the other. Caught in the middle of an ancient conflict, Kyrus and his twin, Brannis, must discover who can be trusted, who must be watched, and who is out to kill them.
Reese Eddings has enough to do just keeping her rattletrap merchant vessel, the TMS Earthrise, profitable enough to pay food for herself and her micro-crew. So when a mysterious benefactor from her past shows up demanding she rescue a man from slavers, her first reaction is to say "NO!" And then to remember that she sort of promised to repay the loan. But she doesn't remember signing up to tangle with pirates and slavers over a space elf prince…
Getting caught between a local crime boss and a galactic syndicate makes you nostalgic for the rock and the hard place. Carl Ramsey has a heist to run and the crew to pull it off. All he's missing is a specialized computer and the tech to run it. But when an unrelated robbery loses him both, the prospects for a successful job look grim. Unfortunately the one who hired them won't take excuses, and the owners of the computer come looking for their stolen gear.
Meet the galaxy's unluckiest outlaws. Carl Ramsey is an ex-Earth Navy fighter pilot turned con man. His ship, the Mobius, is home to a ragtag crew of misfits and refugees looking to score a big payday but more often just scratching to pay for fuel. The crew consists of his ex-wife (and pilot), a drunkard, four-handed mechanic, a xeno-predator with the disposition of a 120kg housecat, and the galaxy's most-wanted wizard.
Control dinosaurs. Tame women. Rule the world. Victor Shelby and his tribe of beautiful alien women have built a fortress to keep themselves safe, but when they encounter another tribe of survivors, Victor must leverage his dinosaur-taming abilities to negotiate either peace or violence. And violence is what Dinosaurland is all about.
When you are old enough to finally become an Earth Mars citizen, everything should be perfect. Right? Not for Liam Hoffen. He's stuck on a mining asteroid called Colony 40, helping his father work a claim that is never going to pay out. His best friend, Nick James is set for life in James' Rental business and Liam just discovered that the girl he's known forever thinks he's pretty great and now she's leaving for the Mars Naval Academy.
Kyrus Hinterdale is about to get drawn into a conflict. His discovery that the world in his dreams is real, and that his twin within that world dreams of him, sets him off on a quest of self-discovery that could reshape two worlds. He is not alone with this special vision. Others like him had been at it far longer, working secret plots and stealing secrets from one world to take advantage in the other. Caught in the middle of an ancient conflict, Kyrus and his twin, Brannis, must discover who can be trusted, who must be watched, and who is out to kill them.
Reese Eddings has enough to do just keeping her rattletrap merchant vessel, the TMS Earthrise, profitable enough to pay food for herself and her micro-crew. So when a mysterious benefactor from her past shows up demanding she rescue a man from slavers, her first reaction is to say "NO!" And then to remember that she sort of promised to repay the loan. But she doesn't remember signing up to tangle with pirates and slavers over a space elf prince…
In his junior year at college, the only things on Sean's mind are doing his homework and getting out of college to get a real job. A gamer and a bit of a nerd, Sean's philosophy in life has been to keep his head down and get his work done. But when a failed kidnapping attempt leaves him with a gaping hole in his memory, his oldest friend dead, and his mother missing, Sean suddenly finds his whole world turned upside down as he's thrust into the hidden world of magic and the supernatural.
Escaping wrongful imprisonment wasn't something Connor had in mind, but being put into stasis aboard Earth's first interstellar colony ship was something he couldn't have prepared for. For 300,000 colonists, the new colony brings the promise of a fresh start...a second chance. Connor might be the wrong man for the colony, but he's the right man to see that it survives what's coming.
The Tyrell are a race that love to fight. The more difficult the fight, the better they like it. Every race they find is given the same level of technology and a specific amount of time to exploit it before the Tyrell come back looking for a fight. Humanity is warned by another alien species that the Tyrell are coming, and the race is on to build an Alliance of races strong enough to stand up against an empire whose expansion has been relentless.
Renegade Star: Publisher's Pack 2 contains books 3 and 4 of the Renegade Star series. Renegade Moon, Book 3. A Renegade never surrenders. After evading both the Union and the Sarkonian Empire, Jace and the crew are off in search of Earth. With the help of Titan, their new base of operations, Jace believes they might just have a chance. That is, if they can outrun the two armies at their backs, and somehow manage to survive a galaxy that wants them dead. Not exactly a walk in the park. But no one ever said being a Renegade was easy.
Avalon was the flagship of the Castle Federation in the last war, now 20 years past. The first of the deep space carriers, no other warship in the fleet holds as many honors or has recorded as many kills. No other warship in the fleet is as old. Accepting the inevitable, the Federation Space Navy has decided to refit her and send her on a tour of the frontier, showing the flag to their allies and enemies as a reminder of her glory - and then decommission her for good.
A month has passed since Victor Shelby was abducted by aliens and put on a savage dinosaur world. In that time, he has learned how to survive, tamed dinosaurs, and won the love of three beautiful alien women. But when another dinosaur attack leaves them defenseless, Victor realizes that he’ll need to push his Tame ability to the limit and build not just a camp, but a fortress. Or they will all die.
This is the story of Stavin Kel'Aniston. A boy trained as a warrior, he serves his people as a caravan guard to obtain gold for their community. Stavin earned dragon-scale armor from the dragon on the mountain for his bravery, but the gift of the dragon comes at a price. Thieves, brigands, and ne'er-do-wells of every kind are attracted to Stavin. As the summer passes, Stavin fights for his life and the honor of his name.
When Mark Ryder's latest mission turns into a bloodbath, he'll find himself alone on the shores of an alien moon hunted by insects the size of skyscrapers. Now, if he wants to get off this rock alive, he'll have to cut a bloody swathe through the bug queen's elite army, rendezvous with the all-female Artemis squad, and blow the whole thing to Kingdom Come without getting killed.
Minalan gave up a promising career as a professional warmage to live the quiet life of a village spellmonger in the remote mountain valley of Boval. It was a peaceful, beautiful little fief, far from the dangerous feudal petty squabbles of the Five Duchies, on the world of Callidore. There were cows. Lots of cows. And cheese. For six months things went well. Then one night Minalan is forced to pick up his mageblade again to defend his adopted home from the vanguard of an army of goblins bent on a genocidal crusade against all mankind. And that was the good news.
In an alien city torn apart by crooked cops and ruthless criminals, private detective Dan Deadman specializes in cases unusual and bizarre. Sure, he doesn't smell great, and he's technically been dead for quite some time, but if you've got a rampaging Hell-beast tearing up your street, or a portal to another dimension appearing in your bathroom, Dan's your man. After saving a mysterious young woman named Ollie from the clutches of something big, slimy, and unpleasant, Dan gets entangled in a missing child case.
Victor Shelby ends each day wondering when his life is going to get better. His parents are dead, he struggles to pay rent, and his boss at the animal control shelter has him cleaning cages instead of working in the field. His dream of helping animals seems destined to end in a mop bucket. Then, Victor is abducted by aliens and deposited on a prehistoric world filled with hungry dinosaurs and beautiful alien women. He doesn’t know why he is here or what his purpose is, but he finds himself fighting for survival.
Jake Taylor was a New Hampshire farm boy who wanted nothing more than to marry his girlfriend, work on the farm, and maybe one day write a great novel. But mankind was fighting the alien Tegeri and their bio-mechanical cyborg soldiers, and UN Central needed men…men to go to war on hostile worlds far from home. Jake wasn't given a choice, not a real one. He found himself torn from home and family, conscripted for life and shipped to the planet Erastus to take his place in the battle lines, never to return.
Science to build a starship. Wizardry to take it past light speed. A crew to give it a soul.
The Mobius is a cobbled-together ship with a matching crew. Captain Carl Ramsey is an ex-Earth Navy pilot whose crew won't let him fly his own ship. The pilot is his ex-wife, the mechanic is a drunk, and the chief of security is from a predatory species. Instead of a star-drive to travel through the astral space between worlds, the ship's wizard does it by hand.
Mission 1: Salvage Trouble
A salvage mission turns into a rescue, and no good deed goes unpunished. With two refugees onboard, the Mobius crew is hounded by bounty hunters, border patrols, and corporate enforcers.
Mission 2: A Smuggler's Conscience
"Don't open the package." It's the smuggler's credo for good reason. When the Mobius crew takes a peek at their illicit cargo, the entire job takes an about-face.
Mission 3: Poets and Piracy
The Mobius crew gets caught in a turf war between a pirate fleet and a galactic criminal syndicate. The trick is getting everyone out alive (and maybe getting paid in the process).
Mission 4: To Err is Azrin
Sometimes, you can't go home again. When a job takes the crew to their security chief's homeworld, she gets dragged into a familial power struggle. Can the rest of the crew bail her out of an old feud gone horribly wrong?
Yes, for those you remember the tv shows Fire Fly or Farscape then this book is for you. A large part was entertaining enough that I am buying the remainder in the series. The characters are flawed and the stories are just thrown together but that was the same with those tv shows.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful
Any additional comments?
A three star book, but one of those rare ones where it's not because it is mediocre, but because it's just a good, albeit forgettable book. "Formulaic and uninspired but well-crafted" is a good phrase for it.
Probably the best thing about it is that this is an omnibus of shorter stories. As such, no book/story outlives it's welcome. Each is much like a television episode, a self-contained story that you can choose to enjoy at your leisure or binge it.
The characters are a bit flat but overall fun. They are typical space fiction archetypes that are put in a new position in each "mission" and you get to watch them work out the problem of the week. The problems range from trying to outrun a much richer and more powerful enemy, to a bit of space pirate action, to learning one of the character's backstory.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a lighter spaceship book (or show). It is an experience rather than some highbrow literature. I for one will continue the series.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful
What did you love best about Mission Pack 1?
This whole series is fantastic. I was a hardcore Firefly fan and this scratched that itch just fine.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Mission Pack 1?
Every moment. I can't even pick one item because I have listened to the entire series at least 4 times and read the books many times as well.
What about Mikael Naramore’s performance did you like?
Excellent voices. Some readers have voices that are distracting but not Naramore. I may seek out books read by him for this reason.
If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?
In space, the wizard will never let you scream.
Any additional comments?
JS Morin has captured lightning in a bottle with this series. On par with Scalzi and Elizabeth Moon his writing never ceases to entertain me.
Stop wasting your time reading this review and start reading or listening to the stories!
This series has all the fun of firefly with an added bonus of magic so beware its addictive and will leave you wanting to listen to the next book “AUDIBLE 20 REVIEW SWEEPSTAKES ENTRY”
I've grown to like this series. It has a crew of semi crazy never do wells up against a busybody of their own in various escapades. The setting is interesting and the dialog is fantastic.
Loveable crew of misfits, balanced with peril of jobs they take on that are less than respectable. Good world building around them with rules for travelling etc.
Narrator does great job with all the characters.
Exciting stories cool characters and space pirates what's not to like it's a fun read I can't wait to get the next installment.
Not a lot of trouble went in to world building. It just was. Humor and a little bit of smart. I enjoyed it
loved it. Didn't want to to stop the track. fwlt like firefly and dresdan files
Star Wars or Farscape meets Firefly or Serenity and absolutely brilliant with characters that are complex but easy to like making you want to know more.