Summer's End

By: John Van Stry

Narrated by: André Santana

Sometimes a dark past can haunt you. Other times it just may be the only thing keeping you alive.

Fresh out of college with his Ship Engineer 3rd-Class certificate, Dave Walker’s only thought is to try to find a berth on a corporate ship plying the trade routes between the many habs, orbitals, and moons in the Solar System. The problem for Dave, however, isn't his straight C average; it's that his stepfather, a powerful Earth senator he’s never met, now wants him dead.

Forced to take the first berth he can find, Dave ends up on the Iowa Hill, an old tramp freighter running with a minimal crew and nearing the end of its useful life, plying the routes that the corporations ignore and visiting the kinds of places that the folks on Earth pretend don’t exist.

Between the assassins, the criminals, and the pirates he needs to deal with, Dave is discovering that there are a lot of things out there that he still needs to learn.

But there’s one hard lesson he learned long ago that he’s being forced to remember: how to be ruthless.

John Van Stry is a United States Air Force veteran who worked in robotics and as a flight test engineer and as a quality and test engineer in the medical-devices industry. He is a collector of motorcycles and big cats. A star of the indie publishing world, Summer’s End is his first novel with Baen Books.

©2022 John Van Stry (P)2022 Audible, Inc.

To infinity and beyond

This story was great and had so many interesting elements. The narrator did a semi decent job of doing a Texan accent, otherwise the voice acting was top notch! As I listened to this book, I really found myself immersed into this story. Jan did a great job of making it technical but not so technical to lose the pace of the story. Overall, great character development and action plus a little bit of humor for flavor. Really a great story!

A good old fashioned space adventure

So I just finished Summer's End. I really liked it. Its been a long time since I read straight Sci-fi, and I have to say I have been listening to fantasy so long, a part of me was waiting for a Shifter, or maybe some dwarves to pop up 🤣🤣 but obviously they never did. It was a good ol fashioned space adventure. If you want to tag along as a kid leaves Earth for the first time, and see what growing up hard and fast does to your prospects in space, give it a listen! The narrator was serviceable, his reading was very natural and his performance of the main character is very good. My only criticism is he doesn't have a lot of voices in his stable. A lot of characters sounded the same after a while. Not like say Leland King (narrator of the Valens Legacy) that dude had hundreds of characters by the end, and damn near had a distinct voice fir all of them. All in all I give it an A+

The Mongoose has struck!

In a bit to distant future, politics, power, and personal responsibility collide. The unlikely hero is an ex-thug just trying to do the right thing and keep his head down. He's believable and likeable. A lot of world building in the first book of what will be a great series.

The narration was spot on.

It was great, gimmy the sequel!

Gotta say, after reading almost all of the authors fantasy works I was a little worried but this sci-fi story was a very fun and entertaining story with a few surprises that I didn't figure out ahead of time.

great read

I have read around 20 books bythis author. I find his storytelling compelling and engrossing. I set down with his books and can't put them down till they're finished. This one is no different. It's his first book about space, that I know of, but I hope it's not the last.I can't wait to see if he writes more about these characters.