Star Force: Origin Series, Books 1-4 (Volume 1)

By: Aer-ki Jyr

Narrated by: Joelle Green-Forbes

Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's Summary

Start as a RECRUIT...become a SUPER-SOLDIER...end up a GALACTIC WARLORD. 

Don your armor, load up on ammo, and get ready for your combat training. You don't become a badass by signing on the dotted line, you gotta earn it the hard way...same goes for your team. You have to learn to fight, how to work together, and how to lose...for the ancient origins of humanity on Earth are dark, devastating, and destined to return. Earth is going to lose, and lose badly when our time is up, but out of the ashes of defeat, we may be able to scrounge up a future if you and the other future warlords can learn how to overcome the losses and turn them to our advantage. 

And the one advantage we have is the repository of ancient knowledge left behind when our former masters abandoned Earth during a civil war. They assume everyone died, but a few human slaves remained and now we live only because of that mistake. 

But they didn't just make one. Their second was leaving the most heavily defended and valuable building on the planet intact because destroying it along with the others when they bugged out would be too time-consuming. Instead, they buried it and now we have limited access to the advanced technology and database inside. From it we know the truth about our ancestry, as well as the superhuman powers they laced into our genome...and because of those powers, any human not under their direct control carries with them an automatic death sentence. 

So when we're found out, we're all going to die...unless you and your team can grow into the war leaders we need, figure out how to use the ancient technology as well as those who created it, and find a way to do the impossible and overcome a galactic empire millions of years old. An empire known as the V'kit'no'sat, which Earth hilariously misinterpreted as a group of extinct animals called the Dinosaurs.

©2016, 2017 Aer-ki Jyr (P)2017 Aer-ki Jyr

Awesome story but the narration needs work.

I made it through the entire story but not to say that it wasn’t painful. I’m going to write the rest of this review in the same style.

Basically. The. Narrator. Was reading. Nearly. Word for word. With unnecessarily. Long. And awkward. Pauses. But. No. True. Stops. As if. The entire story. Were a single. Run on sentence. Sometimes. She would. Be alright for a stretch. But then. Stop. In the middle of a word. Like. “Work. Force.” Her pronunciation. Needs some work. Too. I understand. That. No. One. Will know every word. But. I’d hope there. Would be some editing. And proofing. Of the work. Before. It was. Released. Lastly. She needs to stop rage. Clicking and. Slamming. Her mouse. In the last. Few. Chapters. You could. Hear it. Every few minutes.

Was there any direction or editing with this recording?

...it was absolutely painful to listen to narrator. Her tone, voice fluctuations, and maddening long gaps in between phrases makes it sound like a robot recording from my first Kindle.
I couldn’t tell you about the quality of the story because I couldn’t get past the first chapter.
I will give three stars just to give the benefit of a doubt. I hope I can get my money back.

Good Story, Poor Narrator

I enjoyed the story once I downloaded it to my Kindle, and abandoned the Audible version of the story.
The narrator has a pleasant voice but she reads to her lung capacity, not to the punctuation. This has the annoying effect of adding an audible "period" in the middle of sentences. The the listening experience is a bit like driving on an extremely rough road at high speeds - uncomfortable and jarring. Once she masters the skills necessary to read to the punctuation she will become fun and exciting as a narrator.

Ok just OK

the narrator is monotone and it sounds like it's being recorded in her kitchen. Needs more character development. Every character sounds the same and the story is hard to follow.

Just read this one.

the story is fun if a little light on detail.

the characters are two dimensional at best but the situations and tests they go though reminds me of the book 'Enders game' mixed with the video game 'halo' so it was fun.

the story could have been very enjoyable if not for the narration.

I do not wish to throw stones at the woman doing the voice work because there was so much feedback and background noise that I know the studio is mostly responsible for the poor audio quality.

that being said she sounded like a robot and mispronounced so many words I found myself trying to figure out what she actually meant verses what she actually said, and missing much of what was said afterwards.

that could have been because of bad editing however as many of the character names were said wrongly during the story. a Morgan was called Megan and then Morgan again in the next sentence. I use this example because this character was alone at the time and the author could not have been referring to anyone else.

all in all I think this series has potential and seeing that someone else narrates the 2nd installment I am going to give it a try.

but be warned if the performance of the narrator and the sound quality of the audio is important to you, skip this book and just buy the kindle version.

Narrator is like a cross between a robot and Christopher Walken.

I wanted to listen as the book came recommended, but I couldn't get past the passionless performance with its weird inflections and pauses.

The narration ruined the story, what a shame.

Was there no one to actually oversee this narration, because I think my 13 year old could do a much better job of narration? I enjoyed reading the story, however, listening to Ms. Green-Forbes narration was extraordinarily distracting. Ms. Green-Forbes reads the story as if she is narrating a user manual. There were brief (far too brief) moments of clarity in her narration, but it doesn't make up for how terrible the production value is. What a disappointment that such a good story is ruined by such poor narration.

Interesting Series

Story is definitely built for the long term, there are numerous short story arcs centering on the trials the main characters are going through, but the larger story arcs are barely touched. The larger story arcs will take many more volumes to resolve and explore. This set of four volumes sets the stage for a well developed world with a huge potential for expansion and developement. Where most authors focus on the negative side of human nature and inter actions, this story so far focuses on the more idealized drives of human nature. Over all a very good series with huge potential for development. Only negative is the audio narration, it's straight out of the 1970s the voice narration simply reads the text making no discernable effort to add emotion of tone to the voices, the kindle text to voice application would be just as effective for the narration, in fact it would be better. The audio recording has an annoying feed back and at time reverb that is very noticable, sort of like the back ground noise at a mall food court. At times the back ground noise and feed back makes some sections hard to understand, at least the kindle text to speech reader does not add in a constant back ground noise and whisle. Not sure if Audible narration could be salvaged, probably should be redone to professional narration standards. Best comparison of the narration is a short wave radio conversation with all the reverb, ghosting, occasional echoing, near channel cross over that existed before the invention of digital communication. Understandable but not enjoyable.

Good story, Poor recording quality

The story is good, and the narrator is okay. The narrator kind of sounds like an ai or something which is different. The problem is with the quality of the recording. The editor did a poor job of cutting the recording so when they did cut a part out it comes back rough and unnatural. There is a constant bass sound maybe from tapping the mic or breathing into it and lots of banging sounds and sometimes the sounds of voices not related to the story in the background.

Background noise distracting

Only complaint is the background noise, including base hits at random, that took away from the performance.

Good story but bad narration

What can I say. The narrator is very wooden. There are unnatural pauses and mispronounced words throughout. Seems wooden and somewhat monotone. Please try before you buy.

Hard to listen to

The concept around the story is great but the narration is wooden and almost computer generated. Maybe it was.

Found it hard to engage with and get the visual images I normally get when listening to a book.