Stowaway

Redleg, Book 1

By: Z. D. Dean

Narrated by: Michael Braun

Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

Lt. Zade, on his last days of his last deployment to Afghanistan, still couldn't find the excitement he so desperately needed.

A chance encounter, on his last mission, sends him hurtling through space on the Unity exploration ship XES01. Surrounded by aliens, Zade must quickly learn to interact with the non-soldiers on the crew.

As he tries to earn his place amongst the ship, Zade's combat prowess quickly earns him a spot as the security officer of the ship. A seat left vacant because of a fatal exchange between the former security officer and the wildlife of a far planet. As Zade begins living the adrenaline filled life of a space explorer, he has to ask himself some very important questions.

How does he get back to earth? Does he even want to?

©2015 Z. D. Dean (P)2020 Podium Audio

Not good too many holes

So, I gave this a try because that's how came about the Arisen series. This wasn't worth the time or money. Let me start with the first problem. Everyone has the same backstory, poor need money joined up to get a better life all across the galaxy.

Secondly, why give a human full access to an advanced system without truly knowing him or his qualifications, we don't do that for other humans much less some advanced alien. They also don't explain how or why the two Z named MC are now a love interest. I just think if I'm on a spaceship as human for the first time with aliens the first thing I'm thinking about isn't pussy.

Thirdly, I'm not even going to break down problems with getting selected for the Phoenix project and not even being a Worldwide tab holder, much less being in the regiment. That's just madness to break it down seeing no Ranger tab, enough said. This guy also couldn't max out the pushups and situps on the PT test which is only the lowest of the low, so yeah I have a lot of problems with that and them calling him the best that earth has to offer. He is also an Artillery officer, not some Delta or Team Six guy. It literally made no sense to hear him talk himself up as the best of the best. He also isn't a combat officer since he loves gear more than tactics, who wants to carry more useless shit, this guy does lol. He really didn't deserve a CAB since he didn't have a Worldwide tab, no pity from me.

Fourth, He wasted so much resources to make a weight lifting room for what, since his Nano inside him eliminate the need for working out. It doesn't make sense, the resources and time could be better used. I get the author wanted the love scene, but it was poorly set up and just made me think the author was lazy in that setup.

Finally, the robot AI just happens to want to kill him, why? what did he do? I get that's most of these are things that just help advance the story, but it's poorly written and causes the reader or listener in my case to catch all those issues. I also don't see how no one would take advantage of female Z's position to elevate themselves. That's just too clumsy and poorly designed to be taken seriously that only this human sees any interest in her in 200 years. It also doesn't explain why, if or how she finds him attractive. That's almost as long as the USA has been around and no one saw or showed interest, that's just too much to believe. Hopefully you write something better next time, as for me I'm going to get my credit back.

A real sci fi story without the constant violence

I enjoyed this sci fi story for the story and the personal aspects and personalities.
Great beginning in todays Afghanistan.
Zaid a lieutenant in the Army ends up kidnapped accidentally by an alien research ship.
Aboard
The experiences begin and never end. Zaid and the crew overtime interact together in spite of the various aliens aboard the research ship. Friendships grow and loyalties occur.

I enjoyed this ebook and strongly recommend it to any sci fi/military readers.

A tease.

This so called book is a tease. Like a donkey with a carrot hanging in front of it's nose. You never get there. It leaves you thinking there's still a good story ahead. Looks to me like Z.D. Dean is trying to sell me another book. After this I do not trust the author and will not buy anymore of his audio books.

Republican racist

if you are Republican and you'd like to storm a capitol building this is your book

Entertaining, but ...

A nice plot idea. The story is entertaining and well-narrated, but comes with more holes than a Swiss cheese.

Only a partially successful attempt of the author to turn an entiremy human plot and behavior into science fiction, sometimes reaching illogical levels that gravely diminish the overall quality and reader experience.

Love it!

At first I was like I got a bad book but I was so wrong.

Terrific

Great fun, intriguing, believable, and definitely worthy of continuing to read more in the series. As a matter of fact I am going to look for them now.

Entertaining but extremely flawed.

The book is full of things that make me roll my eyes. The fact that all Aliens are basically human-adjacent is one of the biggest ones. The main character, Alex Zade, is like every mega macho man’s fantasy about themselves. And a super advanced civilization of a collective of aliens not being able to calculate time dilation when they are capable of FTL, perfect matter printers, and UNIVERSAL TRANSLATION? Laughable.

~~~~~STORY SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT~~~~~

The only way I was able to enjoy this book was to pretend that Zade actually got seriously injured in the beginning of the book while investigating the trucks, leaving him in a life-long coma. The rest of the book is just his coma-dream, which explains the laughable holes in science throughout the book including the extremely human-like behavior from all aliens in the book. Also something that REALLY bothered me was how idioms could translate between alien languages. They don’t even translate between human languages. Every time I heard one, it made me roll my eyes.

Otherwise, decently entertaining.

Unexpected..!!

This novel unexpectedly sucked me in and left me hooked. Voice actor, Michael Braun, while deeply reminiscent of R.C. Bray, did an excellent job. The characters are likable, the pacing is consistent, and the plot enjoyably thickens. I'm looking forward to beginning book 2 of the series!

I liked it

I really liked it. It is not a new story, but it is nicely told.

some good plot ideas

this story was poorly read. there was no feeling and I am sure here were some jokes but they were so flatly delivered that they passed me by

Very enjoyable and good narration

Read the book last year and snapped up the audio as soon as I saw it.
Now onto the 2nd book, unfortunately not on audio yet.

Great story

Absolutely loved this book, has everything you could ever want from a great sci-fi. The narrator was perfect for this story..... honestly, not one dull moment. Just about to read book 2.

late nights

loved it did not want it to end especially as this first book was included
start of a brilliant story.great start and went on getting better narration
top class this is the first book of 3 don't know whether thats the whole story or if there will be others in the series.

Isikai but in space

Painful Generic. The characters have no depth and the main character is the best because..... he is the best for some reason? hated how he reacted to all the space stuff and the sci-fi is just your average boilerplate level of generic space stuff.
Give this one a pass.

Enjoyable romp through space that just needed a little more.

I thoroughly enjoyed enjoyed the book. It has obviously been written as a beginning of a long series Which I look forward to reading. My only gripes were the lack of an antagonist though the story. There is plenty of challenges facing Zade but no single threat to overcome. The end of the book sets the ground work for future books which look to fix this problem. Also I thought Zade was a little too perfect. Other than a mention of his “anger problems” towards the end of the book which I didn’t really see reading it he seems to be a perfect person who’s history conveniently gives him all the skills he needs. A special forces soldier who is also well trained in robotics and physics just seemed a little far fetched for me. These are minor gripes which the author already seems to be fixing in the following series. Well worth a read if
Your in to action sci-fi.

Enjoyable

I enjoyed this audio book enough to rate it and get the next book in the series . :)

Great listen

Enjoyed the storyline and it was easy to follow and had a little bit of everything in a space Si-Fi story

go listen, its worth a credit

I think this book comes with the Audible subscription and it's one of the best out there.

This book will have you buying the rest in the series..

Huge plot hole

I could not listen to the book because of a HUGE plot hole - now would a civilization capable of traveling between the stars and reconstructing a human arm at the first attempt and not have multiple redundancies for mission-critical data? And store a single copy of that mission-critical data in a device mounted to the outside of their ship where is it susceptible to damage?

No, it did not work for me.