The Ruins of Karzelek

The Mandrake Company Series, Book 4

By: Ruby Lionsdrake

Narrated by: Jill Redfield

Kalish has been a successful treasure hunter for years, relying on only herself to deal with deadly predators, impenetrable jungles, and diabolical booby traps. But with her father kidnapped, and a notorious pirate demanding an ancient alien artifact that may or may not exist, Kalish needs help.

She hires a mercenary company because she needs their combat experience and their piloting skills - the intelligence officer with the background in translating alien hieroglyphics could come in useful, too. Sedgwick Thomlin is charming and handsome, when he isn't busy sneezing at something from his long list of allergies. But she's not sure if she can trust him or the mercenaries, not when the most valuable and coveted relic in the galaxy might turn out to be real.

The Ruins of Karzelek is a space-based adventure and romance that can be listened to as a standalone. It is also part of the Mandrake Company series and brings back characters from the other books, such as Val, Gregor, Tick, and Striker.

©2014 Ruby Lionsdrake (P)2017 Podium Publishing

Space men/women not living like monks.

The story is engaging, but the most memorable is the author doesn't treat the characters like sexual ciphers. Too much sci fi treats there characters like they took monastic vows of celibacy. Even if they can't write XXX rated scenarios as good as this, they could at least acknowledge that stuff happens. And the narrator can go from sultry to command without skipping a beat. Not for the prudish, but for the engaged.

A hero with vulnerabilities

Segde can defeat the bad guys, protect the females, and save the day with the best of them. That is if his allergies doesn’t defeat him first. I loved the fact that our hero wasn’t 100% macho. So far, this has been an excellent series.

Narrator has only one voice for the main man

As much as I like sci-fi romance, this series peaked at book 1. This wasn’t terrible, just average. The characters are rather one note, shallow, and a little too much like fan-fic for characters from other series. For example, Striker is a lesser version of Firefly’s Jayne Cobb, from his focus on profit to his tasteless jokes and naming his gun.

On the plus side, the humor worked better on this one. I also appreciate that there are capable women in the series, from Ankari to Sgt. Hazel. On the down side, as much as I like her for female voices, the narrator’s voicing of the male lead in each book (Capt Mandrake, Sergei, or this book’s Sedgwick) is a thoroughly unsexy, artificially low monotone. If the robo-he-man voice wasn’t bad enough, the naughty parts were very cornball cringe… although perhaps I found them cringe because of the shrivel-me-tinders voicing. Duet narration would improve this series a lot. As-is, this series has all the sci-fi ingredients I love, but they never come together right.

Series I preferred:
🚀Hunt the Stars by J Mihalik- if you want both space bounty hunting and romance.
🚀Consortium Rebellion also by J Mihalik - if romance takes priority, with swashbuckling and gals who kick booty
🚀Barbarians of the Sand Planet - If you want the minimum space camp to get to the maximum naughty parts. First three are available in a collection.
🚀Firefly series- who needs the naughty parts when you’ve got more colorful characters, amazing narration and great spaghetti western vibes? Some of these are even free in Audible Plus