Star Soldier

Doom Star, Book 1

By: Vaughn Heppner

Narrated by: Ely Miles

Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

It’s survival of the fittest in a brutal war of extinction!

Created in the gene labs as super soldiers, the Highborn decide to replace the obsolete Homo sapiens. They pirate the Doom Stars and capture the Sun Works Ring around Mercury. Now they rain asteroids, orbital fighters and nine-foot tall drop troops onto Earth in a relentless tide of conquest.

Marten Kluge is on the receiving end. Hounded by Thought Police, he lives like an ant in a kilometer-deep city. The invasion frees him from a re-education camp but lands him in the military, fighting for the wrong side. Star Soldier is the story of techno hell in a merciless war, with too many surprises for any grunt’s sanity. Star Soldier is a full novel, 82,000 words in length by Vaughn Heppner, Writers of the Future winner, Vol. IX.

©2010 Vaughn Heppner (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Good book and the series only gets better!

Cons:
While I give this book a 3.5 I would highly suggest getting it! The series overall is an easy 4 or maybe a 5 (on the last 2 hours of book 6). The problem with this book is the story seems hopeless and there are quite possibly too many characters and a lot going on. Eventually towards the middle of the book and in all the others it focuses mostly on the main character.

Pros:
The narrator does a decent job in this book, as I've seen much worse, but he becomes top notch in book 2 and only gets better. You can tell every character apart without a problem; even the ones that don't talk much. This book as well as all others don't take much time getting into the action. The story isn't predictable and keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout the hell the main character and humanity go through. It has quite a bit of strategy (which i like the most) and more action and space battles than any book I've read.

If your into science fiction, space battles, and hand to hand combat; I would highly suggest getting this book and the rest of the series. I rank it up there with the star force and lost fleet series (so readers know where i stand), but the books are quite dissimilar. It is much closer to the star force series, but in a much crueler world where genetic superiors claim themselves as the rulers.

Worst narration I've heard from any audible book

I could almost not stand listening to this book because of the narration. The character accents were awful and the pace was too slow. The narrator was a huge distraction to the story.

too much vocal fry

sure, it makes the bad guys seem worse, but it also hurts the listener's ears. Does anyone really talk like that other than performers?

Story severely hindered by terrible narration.

Aside from the robotic painfully purposeful word by word reading, the rampant mispronunciations made this audiobook unbearable. After the part around chapter four about the invasion of Japan where the narrator said "new-cue-ler" no less than 25 times I had to stop listening.

Great book! Worst narration!

Great book! Worst narration! So bad I debate the next book now which sucks but what do you do? Me? I am still thinking!

Good Story

The story it self is very good. The narration takes a bit to get used to. After awhile you get used to. It almost seems to be a computer gen. voice but it's not. I will check out the next book!

Different favor but action pack series

I'm in book 4 and this series is good. It took me a while to get into the storyline but it grew on me.

Love the story.. But...

Oh my god. Vaughn, how could you have this book and series in a tin can, horrible, but because I like your writing I'll listen to all of them. But PLEASE no more TIN CAN Sound.

Sorry got say what I feel. Great Series though.

As others indicate, Great Story - Terrible Narrati

This review is going to focus on the narration since this is an audiobook (and the story is fantastic). All accents, mispronunciations and minor attributes aside, the most frustrating thing about this narration is the speed at which he reads. I actually checked the audible app to make sure the speed hadn't been set to less than 1.0 by accident - it wasn't. The only reason i was able to continue with the series is b/c the app let me increase playback to 1.5 times normal, i highly recommend that if you want to listen to this at (for all other narrators) normal reading speed. This is actually the third series in a row i've listened to that had poor quality narration and, as i said, i almost refunded the book and stopped with the series. I'm sure this narrator was cheap but they still overpaid. if you set playback speed to 1.5x and can look past some very poor pronunciation and character voices, the story is well worth it, its a fantastic adventure.

Don't bother wasting your time

This was the worst and most boring story I've "read " from V H, story was like listening to the future if the woke crowd takes over. It was hard to listen, follow or get through. I skipped to the end just to write this review. Horrible story don't bother.

Terrible Narration

Cant tell if book was really bad or it was fully down to the guys horrible monotone delivery either way awful results.

Robotic speech

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Different narrator

What could Vaughn Heppner have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

I don't know as after 2 hrs the robotic speech stopped me from understanding plot and stopped listening

Any additional comments?

The narrator sounds like a speak and spell from the 1980 s