No Medals for Secrets

Poor Man's Fight, Book 4

By: Elliott Kay

Narrated by: Tess Irondale

Length: 9 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

The Union of Humanity exists only because the aliens demanded it. After a hundred different treaties and countless broken promises, mankind's powerful neighbors forced humanity into a common defense and a single diplomatic voice. Yet within the Union's borders, the human race is as fractious as ever. When the star system of Archangel is invaded by the three greatest corporations in human space, the Union is powerless to intervene.

Corporal Alicia Wong thrives on the front lines. She doesn't like the war, but she likes the challenges and the clear-cut goals. She likes knowing who her friends and enemies are, too. Yet after uncovering evidence of alien contact in violation of Union laws, Alicia finds herself in a world of espionage and covert missions. Before it's all over, her choices may change the course of Archangel's war - and humanity's future.

©2017 Elliott Kay (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

good but predictable

I like it but it is just a long vignette for the poor man's series.

Extremely Hard to Like

I hate giving this book a bad review, because it isn't poorly written. The voice actor is decent. The main character is alright if a little generic.

However there are some serious issues that make this book very hard to like if you've read the previous books in the series.

1. Main character swap. We get a change of perspective to that of a side character. While I've always hated it when series do this, it's made a bit worse this time by swapping to a more stereotypical "Marine McDude" character, who this time happens to be a women. I don't want to play it up like Tanner was hyper-original or something, but the fact that for all the non-fight scenes in the book, he departs pretty far from the usual macho badass MC of most military Sci-fi. Had we moved to the viewpoint of a more different character similar to Tanner, this might have been a better spin-off.

2. Reader swap. While the reader for this book isn't terrible, swapping mid series feels awful, and the previous narrator was perfect. I even preferred his version of Alicia, this books protag, better than the female narrator who came on for this one.

3. Side story. Alright, maybe I'm biased here, but I hate cut-out side stories in general. This one feels particularly poorly handled though, and is the one aspect in which the writing itself fails, in that where exactly you are in the timeline, and what the hell is going on in the world, is very confused and remains so well into the book. I'm listening to it now about 40% of the way in and I'm still not sure what's going on.

All in all, it's not bad. However it feels like it belongs in its own true spinoff, not listed with the main series. It also would have benefited a lot by keeping the same narrator. The beginning of the book sorely needed a little more exposition and context as well.

Ultimately, I'm not enjoying this at all, more just struggling through it as painful as it is so I can properly appreciate the next book, which returns to the original narrator and MC.

wish narrator listened to previous books

the narrator did a great job with all the female voices except jenika. if she listened to the previous audio books she could have narrowed down some of the voices better for consistency. all the Male voices were just deep base and bellowing, if two men were speaking back to back, no way to tell a difference. it was ok. great story.

Interesting change

This book follows a different character than the previous book. Initially it was a bit of a metal gear mismatch as this book is narrated by a lady. She does a good job, but after following previously with the male main character it was off putting initially. Once you get the character you get the change of voice actors. Just initially it was bothering me. Why the change? However it makes sense shortly into the book.

Good story in the universe but a bit of a filler

Good story in the Poor mans fight universe. Filled in some back story of things that happened in other books. A different narrator threw me off and their performance wasn't as good as the other narrator from previous books.

Not much of Tanner Malone in this story.

The story was interesting, but it went from Tanner Malone being out of the military to back in, then immediately injured and out of the story. This is more of a sidebar story, and it was reasonably entertaining but not up to snuff on the previous 3 stories.

2.5 in the series

timeline seems to be after book 2 but before book three. good addition to the series hard to go wrong with the gunny on your team

Narrator did not have the voice range for multiple

it hurt my ears. For this book a team (man and woman) would have been better.

Not a bad story but don't change the narrators

Story wasn't bad but if you are binging the entire series, the switch in narrators ruins the immersions. The Narrator did a decent job......BUT it did suck if you listened to the first 3 books in a row, then they switch narrators, and the accents and voices you remembered instantly change and it ruins the immersion. Like I said, decent story, and the narrator did a decent job, but switching a narrator during a story series is a big NO NO. Not her fault.

Just a bit different

where Tanner Malone is normally the central character of the story. Corporal Wong is the stories main character.
Also a new narrator is used so the dialects of some of the series other important story characters have changed.
Tress Irondale did a good job but at first the audible story was hard for me to fully engage my self into it.
Then again that's probably just me.