The Fallen Race

The Shadow Space Chronicles, Book 1

By: Kal Spriggs

Narrated by: Jonathan Waters

Baron Lucius Giovanni, Captain of the battleship War Shrike, finds himself without a home or nation, his ship heavily damaged, and crew in bad shape. The odds against their personal survival are slim. The time of humanity has come to a close. The great nations have all fallen, either to the encroaching alien threats or to internal fighting and civil war. The aliens who seek to supplant humanity, however, have not taken one thing into account: Lucius Giovanni. He and his crew will not give up - not while they still draw breath. If this is to be the fall of humanity, then the crew of the War Shrike will go down fighting...and in the heat of that fight, they may just light a new fire for humanity...

©2014 Jacob Spriggs (P)2014 Jacob Spriggs

Classic story arc in a new shape

Would you listen to The Fallen Race again? Why?

Yes, they have loots of character and different sub-plots going on.

What other book might you compare The Fallen Race to and why?

All "classic" SF The Fallen Race have it all, fall of the space empire,heir to the throne, rebuild the empire, space pirates, lost fleets, psyker, not one but two xenophobic alien races who want to destroy the empire. Nothing is new or inventive but the author take meny parts that make a good epic space story and use them.

Which scene was your favorite?

The warlord part, then one surviving imperial battleship trying to survive day to day, like trying to keep and pay the crew. get spare parts, trying to get money by hiring themselves out as mercenaries to a planet, and sell fighter engines as racing engines.After that the story shift focus and become more epic and "large"

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The main character love to reference to (real) famous sf books and movies, it totally shatter the illusion that the story is "real" laughing about "pregnancy to to birth in 3 seconds" event. How the enemy commander rationalizes the genocide and think himself as a good person. How the biggest baddest imperial battleship escape the destruction. Irritated about, lack of diplomacy and/or cold logic, you purposely trying to exterminate the humans in the Empire, stop the genocide or we (and the big fleet we have) will start to nuke your planets to cinders, we have noting more to louse at this point but you have.

Any additional comments?

The biggest problem I have is that the two main character is to much of "mary sue" and almost never make a wrong decision, and even spell it out "my only weakness is that I am not omnipotent"

Good idea but poorly implemented.

I found the overall story entertaining but not very satisfying. It appeared the author was skipping over details that would have made it more interesting, to an extent that makes it feel like an abridged book.

As for the narrator, while not a terrible performance, the characters didn't sound believable and it was difficult to become immersed in the story.

If the author would go back and flesh out his story and use a more experienced narrator, I'd be a happy man.

Kal is coming along nicely as a writer.

As this book shows. Tons of action, plenty of plot twists, things toward the end that you would not expect at the beginning.
Well done. lots of room for more stories.

Fun story w/presentism problem

great fun popcorn scifi
however suffers from the perpetual presentism problem of modern sci-fi. Magically, the status quo neoliberal moral system is of course the moral system of the far future protagonist!!!

edit: lowering from 4 to 3 stars since the full series is not available on Audible only the first three books

Ok

Any additional comments?

The story was ok. Not boring, but nothing special. However it does seen to have the potential to become a pretty good series.