Tesla Prime and the Regulus Event

By: Douglas Equils

Narrated by: Sean Slater

Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

In Tesla Prime and the Regulus Event, a group of seven astronauts embark on a mission to explore the distant and alien world of Proteus. Twenty-seven years later, the crew of Tesla Prime returns to find that the Earth has vanished. The only clues are a cryptic message left behind on the Moon and a ring structure larger than the Earth itself. The woefully unprepared group of scientists and engineers must band together and find a way to save the human race from extinction. With the fate of the world teetering, a last minute replacement rises to become an unwilling anti-hero in Earth’s final hour.

At its core, Tesla Prime is an intelligent science fiction epic in the same subgenre as Dune and Ender’s Game. It is a layered character driven novel, with complex and damaged heroes, mystery, betrayal, and a dash of romance. Based on my work at NASA/JPL and lectures I have given as an astronomy professor, I’ve worked hard to make sure the story is grounded in real science and cutting-edge technology. Welcome aboard Tesla Prime!

©2020 Douglas Equils (P)2020 Douglas Equils

Couldn't get invested in the characters.

The premise is fine. The characters are okay to blah. This is book was hard to listen to. I do not recommend it. It reads like a high school creative writing project that was turned into a book. The characters are predictable, stilted and the conflict feels forced.

I'll look at Mr. Equils again if a few years.

Unlikable batch of characters, unlikely physics, distracting narration

I found it hard to keep track of an assortment of sometimes unnecessary characters. The impossible problems at the heart of the adventure are solved in an implausible manner. Without making it a spoiler, I’ll just say that the first goal of the ever-squabbling ragtag group of a few dozen humans is to defeat a race of technologically advanced beings and survive in an unlivable climate with basically three weapons, one spaceship and an assortment of shop tools. (The spaceship does have one interesting feature which was well-used.) Totally out-numbered and out-gunned, it is necessary for some type of biological-machine interface to suddenly appear, deus ex machina style, to even the impossible odds and to make up for the contant in-fighting and lack of cohesion of the group.

The ultimate goal and climax of the novel involves moving and/or destroying several astoundingly huge massive objects with one space ship. Don’t think so!

Whatever momentum the story has—it does speed up in the last half of the book—is interspersed with too many emotion-ridden flashbacks and musings.

The narration is very clear and listenable during descriptive passages, but I found the voices created for some of the characters to be over-played and stereotypical. One male character sounded like a spoof of an “old geezer” from a 1950’s western. Voicing of female characters was particularly distracting. The lead female protagonist sounded like a little girl, not a woman. The relative volume of the typical voicing of some characters ranged annoyingly from almost imperceptible mumbling to full-chested shouting, while several of the others sat in the sweet spot.