The Forever

By: Craig Robertson

Narrated by: Scott Aiello

Length: 17 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's Summary

The Forever is a two-parter story, containing The Forever Life and The Forever Enemy.

Jon Ryan is irreverent, cocky, funny, and walks with a swagger. He says what he means, he says what he wants to, and, in fact, he says what needs to be said.

The cocky fighter pilot turned astronaut is also Earth's only chance for survival. The planet Jupiter, thrown off orbit, will destroy Earth in less than a century. Jon volunteers for the most ambitious, desperate mission ever conceived: His consciousness must be transferred into an experimental android host, where he'll live an immortal - and lonely - life. Jon's only companion on his 50-year voyage is his ship's irritable AI.

After successfully journeying for decades and locating a suitable human resettlement, Jon begins to discover the wonders life can hold, including the power of family and, for once, true peace. But no good deed, or good man, goes unpunished.

The US president wants him dead and is willing to sacrifice his own people to eliminate Jon. An alien species has vowed a holy war to eliminate all humans, either on Earth or wherever they might run. Only Jon can protect humans from their enemies.

With the best planet for colonization ruled by an ancient, malevolent species, there may be no hope for humans in a crowded galaxy. The limits of human technology may not be sufficient. The limits of Jon's endurance may not be enough. His endless enemies may prove to be unstoppable.

Jon may have forever, but does humanity have any future at all?

©2016 Craig Robertson (P)2018 Podium Publishing

Magical fix to all problems & grotesque side plots

When I read SciFi, I anticipate an engaging story, discovering new things and overcoming hard-fought challenges. I also want as little unnecessary drama and objectional material as possible. The Forever is almost exactly the opposite of this formula. Here are the reasons why:

All challenges, especially hard ones, are quickly and easily resolved with a miraculous future technology which becomes suddenly available. It really takes all of the fight and anticipation out of any difficult situation. It's like playing your favorite video game with cheat mode on. It gets boring really fast without the challenge.

To me, a large part of the story is seeing the character develop, how they change over time and becoming something better through experiences. It seems to me that in this book the character never changes. Instead, it is more of a wild fictitious history of his travels than an engaging story.

The plot jumped around and didn't seem to flow in an overarching direction. Imagine reading a book about fishing and then the focus switches to boats and the types of motors they have, then shifting to snorkeling. They all have to do with the ocean, but they are all kind of mashed together without any flow or purpose. It isn't what I was expecting or hoping for.

The characters really had shallow relationships. An example of this is when a character passes away (one close to the hero). The hero's response didn't seem connected to the situation. Sure, he said he was sad, then jumped to other trivial things in the next instant. It had the feeling like a person saying "I'm sad that happened." Then in the next moment saying "Well, what's on TV?" To me, this cheapens the loss and makes the hero seem flippant and not connected.

The story delves heavily into politics, even using recent president's last names. I can understand some politics, but the heavy focus takes large portions of the book realy detracted from what could have been. What made it worse for me was that he constantly bashed the USA. (I live here, and I love this place.) I realized it is just a story and it is in the future, but to me, it came across very abrasive.

The political leaders seemed juvenile and ridiculous. There is no circumstance where a leader like this could realistically control a group of children much less a nation. Given what this leader does and says, even children would rise up and overthrow him. Not only were they unrelatable, but they were grotesque. I mean that literally. Their actions, words, and ideas were simply disgusting. It strongly detracted from the actual storyline, and my thumb got sore from hitting the "Skip 30 seconds" button.

In the end, there are portions I really liked, but they were mostly at the beginning and then less and less as the book went on. I felt as though I was blindfolded eating a meal. At first, the food was interesting and delightful. Then, out of nowhere someone kept slipping unpalatable, boring or disgusting things in. I was looking for a great series, and I was very hopeful when I saw all of the sequels. Now, the thought of going through all those books makes me cringe inside.

If you are looking for some great books try The Lost Fleet, or Synchronicity Wars.

Pass if you want smart sci-fi

This is not the Bobiverse. The protagonist wanders from planet to planet encountering a variety of dumb aliens. This isn't to say that they all lack intelligence, just that they all act very stupidly.
The AI companion is sufficiently toxic and stupid that you wish it wasn't part of the story... until it inexplicably becomes cooperative during times of stress.
The protagonist just bounces between scenarios with no apparent growth, but doesn't need it as every malevolent space-faring species can be overcome with a very small bag of tricks.
Perhaps I needed to suspend disbelief and take it as the comical space romp that it was written to be, but I just didn't enjoy it.

It started off well

It was good until it started throwing political propaganda down my throat. I was hoping for a science fiction story, not a CNN op-ed.

Ridiculous. Predictable. All Ex Machina.

Avoid This book.

This book feels like it was trying to ride the coattails of "We Are Legion (We Are Bob)" Very similar ideas that are poorly executed. AS well as a lot of other "inspired" ideas from much better novels.

To start, The Protagonist is suppose to be one of mankind's "best". He is one of a few astronauts selected to find a place for humankind to relocate and save the species. So, that being said, it is ridiculous for him to be so ignorant of many obvious solutions to obstacles in this book. One of the major problems is, is that the author writes himself into a corner by providing the protagonist with too much over powered equipment. Going into spoilers a bit here, but this needs to be said because of how ridiculous it is. The first alien race the protagonist encounters, is what is essentially an alien god race. They don't want to "help" the humans and just want to be left alone. They wont use their almighty alien god magic to help humanity or provide them with knowledge on how they can be saved because morality is strictly a human concept that they themselves don't have. Instead for some asinine reason, they decide to give the protagonist a multipurpose device that will tell him the details of anything it touches and can use threads like octopus arms and is super strong so it can get him out of most problems with a bit of imagination. This device, if anyone tries to study it, will self-destruct so no one can replicate it. They also provide him with a super alien gun so he can protect this device so no one can steal it from him and what? study it and replicate it? But isn't that what the self-destruct is for? The Protagonist also never likes using his super alien space gun because he rather "save" it as his ace in the hole and doesn't want anyone else to know he has it.

He then gets captured by an alien race, with inferior technology, and yet, he doesn't want to use his alien tech to escape because that would be too easy and this book needs tension. Instead the author spends like 3 chapters with him running away and ultimately realizing. Oh. Duh. I can just have my ship's A.I. Pilot the shuttle for me and come rescue me(His super intelligent A.I. did not even think of this). There is no reason for him, an astronaut, who early in the book claimed to have studied every knook and krany of his ship before they launched and knows ALL of its features, forget this one detail that woulda saved him days of hassle. no. and the fact that the A.I. didn't think of it, is also just absurd.

Also he visits a planet where there are varying populations of aliens that look like different earth snack foods. <---DUMB.

ALso ALso. He gets Alien god exmachina'd 3 times. they randomly gift him with soooooooooo much tech. It is absurd they still tried to evacuate earth instead of saving it. Given the technology they had access to. I could list a dozen ways they coulda saved earth and never had to evacuate the planet at all.

ALso Also Also, The president in the future is some insane super dictator. And the protagonist, instead of using his magic unbeatable alien tech to stop him, He lets the human resistance struggle with fighting him and focuses on his own problems.

Overall, The book has no real tension since the protagonist has ultimately, no weaknesses and power that no normal being can contend with. The only tension comes from the author forcing what should be smart characters, to act dumb and limit themselves only because the obvious easy solutions woulda made this book 1/3 it size.

Not so great...

Let’s start with Galaxy Outlaws was way better if your looking for a fun sci-fi crew of misfits and Expeditionary Force has the AI you need to hear. This book has a weak plot with huge holes in the storyline. The main character’s banter is reminiscent of deadpool if deadpool was written by a 14 year old. Finally there is a heavy and unnecessary political slant.

Visionless and chauvanistic

This book is frustratingly awful. The characters don't have a lot of emotional depth and you don't really want to root for any of them. The main character has so little intelligence, emotional and otherwise, that listening to his thoughts and actions is painful. Luckily for him, the enemies he runs up against are similarly simple minded. I was hoping for some kind of a twist, but nope. One of the main character's many sons gleefully suggests genocide at one point and his father is proud of him for it.

The female characters don't fare much better. Our only view of them is from the main character's perspective, and that's pretty limited. The women in the book all fall into solidly stereotypical roles: mother, caregiver to children, nagging housewives, victims to be raped, and people to be tolerated and placated.

I love science fiction and read and listen to a lot of it. It's not all amazing. A lot of it is just pretty ok. This is downright terrible. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

Fun, but...

A fun, delightful story for science fiction fans, right up to the point where the author thought it was wise to insert his political opinions into the story, something I find highly annoying.

was great fun until...(spoilers}

current political references were thrown into the story. also painting the United States in such a negative light during the OBVIOUS propaganda push (UN=global agenda being the good guys) really put a sour taste in my mouth. if the authors had but left it pure science fiction and not unashamedly name dropped current political actors, it would have been an enjoyable story. I, and I'm sure many others like me, enjoy this genre to escape our realities, if only for a brief time. so to interject such a blatant propaganda theme into the story completely diluted it. the narrator was great tho. he was the only reason I was able to slog through its entirety. he made this crap bearable... please give that man a raise. I'm off to get my money back... and I don't recommend spending yours on this.

Casually Misogynistic and Scientifically Implausible

For someone who likes hard sci-fi like Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, this book was an intolerable joke. The science is completely ridiculous and the jovial frat-boy voice of the protagonist is full of casual misogyny and conversational inanities.

Yes, It's Worth Your Coveted Audible Credit...

Truly a very enjoyable read - It should be classified as a Space Opera with a dash of "We Are Legion" thrown in. Broad of scope, this epic listen crosses the decades of time and space, and offers a wildly fun ride with a diverse cast.

So, take out your wallet. Pull out your Audible credit. Blow the dust off of it, and use it on this great audio book.

It's well worth it.

Scott Aiellos performance saved the day!

Overall good audio book keeps.your entertained, a few far fetched sections but the narrator helps it to keep it moving. I will purchase the second book as I'm intrigued as to what's going to happen to John and his Brood.!

Not has well written as the Bob series but still worth listening to.

sorry . but no...

a pale version of similar concepts and characters already out there.. not often I dont finish a book, but this was one of them.. characters were thin and uninteresting.. by the time I got to the fishy aliens I had lost interest and just found the whole thing annoying.. sorry to be so scathing but this was the third book in a row i had struggled through (different authors) and it is putting me off trying new authors...

Purile Nonsense

Purile Nonsence... But an easy listen on a long car journey. Wouldn't recommend otherwise. Well performed

Not great but far from bad.

I just feel like a lot was skipped over. The narrator perfect. The characters where likable. The story could of been so much more. Parts could of been expanded and probably this one book could of turned into 3.

Half Effort

Very lazy writing and much better options with similar actual storylines. Little emotional investment and a lot of hurried jumping to plot points

I do not understand this book.

Ok I would describe the main character as Deadpool in space and complete lovable idiot.
stories interesting but I do feel like there was no plan is just write what ever came to mind by the author.
the audio narration performance was very good. it was one of the main reasons I kept listening to it and the other being hate unfinished story.
the most annoying thing about this book was the logic or the lack of it. No consistency at all frustrating.
Even with all that said its not a bad book.
I would give It 2 and a half stars many be to 3 stars all depending on your mood.

Great narration but parts of the story seem rushed

This reminded me of Expeditionary Force with the humourous and sarcastic nature of the main character and banter.

It's also really frustrating that the characters seem to miss glaringly obvious plot points for many chapters.

I really enjoyed the narration and the sorry has some great character development but all of the perilous situations that build that character seem forced with Ex Machina solutions seemingly plucked out of thin air.

Overall I still really enjoyed it but I'm not sure if I will listen to the second book.

A Truly Great Book

I really enjoyed this book. It was unpredictable and had great action... which I loved! Lol😂
The characters were so so good. Especially John, his feelings about alien people were the same as mine. I laughed out loud many times, which I have not done very much in these lock down days where we see one innocent black person after another be tortured and murdered at the hands of racially prejudiced people! It has made me feel very sad, and like there is nothing to look forward to, but this book has made me laugh and giggle and even cry! I love seeing the good guys win. The bad guys were wonderfully evil, psychopathic and totally dispicable. Thank you Craig for taking me away to another place and helping me get through these really hard times. A big thank you to the narrator Scott Aiello. Your character voices were perfect. It blew me away how you managed to give every character their own perfect voice. Many thanks and I am just about to start part 2 so shhhh! 😁

Lighthearted and entertaining.

I read several reviews beforehand and wasn't sure I'd like this one. Glad I started listening anyway because I most certainly did like it. Some reviewers complain about the light tone and the lack of embellishments, but I feel they totally missed what this book is about.

It's not trying to be a Hamilton Space Opera nor an ingenious HGTTG. It's simply a light hearted soft Sci fi adventure with a huge portion of humor and neither the author nor the main characters take themselves too seriously. That said, there's actually several moments where I found my eyes moist. Granted I'm sentimental, but don't mistake lightheartedness (that's a long word) with banality. There's an excellent adventure hidden beneath the fun, and I'll gladly purchase more books from this author.

Dull and unfulfilling

Scott Aiello gave a good performance but the material was relatively poor.

This was yet another American fighter pilot saves humanity story aided by a slightly eccentric English ‘butler’ type character in the form of an AI.

The main story line was pretty formulaic with minimal character development, for example, the author over used moody silences to help portray the AI.

I personally like stories that have at least a half believable description of the science behind events and tech used. This was missing and it left a big hole in the story.

The solutions the main character used to solve the various problems that came his way were repetitious and became very predictable very early on. There was very little suspense.

There are far better books out there that use similar ideas such as androids with human brains downloaded to them etc. I wouldn’t personally recommend spending hours listening to this as I found it pretty flat and unfulfilling.