Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy

If you like space opera this one is fun. Douglas puts an interesting twist on the future as the US gets a substantial dose of its own real politik. There are a lot of classic plot lines and good characterization for this genre. Definitely worth it.

Always in the first book of the series it takes time to get all the players down... About midway through the book I was into the story... Thanks for the adventure and I will be downloading book 2 and 3

Yes, this was a great listen. I just finished listening to Star Marines from the ???third??? series in this storyline and wanted to listen from the beginning as it had been so long. I'm glad I did. It is an excellent story and the narrator is very easy to listen to.

Major Garroway was the primary character and well done. His character was interesting and not so narrow in nature as some book characters are. A bit irreverent, a caring father, a dedicated marine, has his failings, but tries to work past them.

It's going to be a bit of work to go back through the Heritage, Legacy, and the first two books of the Inheritance trilogies, but I think it will be worth it.

A great sci fi book about the stars. one book I always love to back too. iys a great story that always keeps me thinking and involved with the story. one of my favorite story lines.

The publisher probably should have had a real Marine ghost write it for William Keith (aka Ian Douglas)

Maybe, but I will not listen to anymore in this series.

story line had a slow start but a good finish. not bad over all thougha

Like the book, although it features the author's familiar theme of "America good, Europe bad" (later copied in Star Carrier). Written in late 90's, certain mentioned events in the 00's and the 10's are obviously different from reality. The narrator does a good job, including foreign speech, but it's a little jarring not to hear any vocal changes between characters and no accents.

Definitely continuing with book 2. Narrator does a good job expressing characters' personalities. Author presents realistic characters -- ordinary people accomplishing great feats with ordinary skills (ordinary for Marines, that is).

This book was great if you're a fan of sci fi space battles, and it scrupulously plays politics down the middle. If you're like me and you read the blurb and expected a cool alternate history that brings humans through Mars, though, don't buy it. I think that payoff is coming in book two or three, since it's barely touched on here. Instead, you get a futuristic series of military skirmishes with little levity and thankfully limited blood (sometimes these things become a gory body count - this book has a small number of casualties but makes them matter).

For that kind of book, this is a solid entry. I'm just disappointed because I was expecting something different.

MUCH less on the Military conflict and more on what I was expecting to be the central theme of the book, the discovery of an ancient archeological site on Mars.

Not me.

If you are looking for jingoistic one-dimensional war fiction, this could be your cup of tea. If, on the other hand, you were expecting a thoughtful sci-fi exploration of the possible repercussions of finding the remains of a 500,000 year old human civilization on Mars (as was I) this is not the book for you. The fact that this takes place on Mars is almost completely immaterial to the plot.