The Translocator

By: M.G. Herron

Narrated by: Tess Irondale

Length: 24 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's Summary

A revolutionary quantum teleportation device promises to bring humanity one step closer to the stars.

Until it fails. Spectacularly.

Archaeologist Eliana Fisk is ripped from Earth while the whole world watches. She lands on a strange new world inhabited by a lost tribe of ancient Mayans. Meeting them, getting firsthand exposure to age-old customs and rituals...it seems like an archaeologist’s dream.

But what if their rituals have a darker meaning? What if the god these people pray to is no god at all? And how in the world will she ever get back home?

Thus begins a pulse-pounding race against time that hurls Eliana into the great unknown, revealing ancient technologies and marvelous mysteries more outlandish than she ever imagined.

The Translocator is an action-packed sci-fi thriller perfect for fans of Stargate, The Atlantis Gene, and other archaeology-inspired science-fiction adventures.

©2018 M.G. Herron (P)2019 Podium Publishing

A Thrilling Sci-fi Ride

I read the first book in the Translocator series, and dove into the second one but never finished. I'm a slow reader, but I can plow through podcasts and audiobooks. I was very excited to revist this world with the new release of all three books combined into an audiobook.

Like the few other of Herron's work's I've read, the Translocator series has a steady diet of influence from various movies and media that's fun to pick up on, but clearly makes this story stand on it's own. The journey starts in the modern real world, but then takes off, and makes no qualms to remind you that this is fiction, and you're going on a fun ride. Rakulo, Eliana, and Amon feel like real people, and it' easy to track along. There's a good balance between action pacing and technical explanation, as often once I find myself asking, "Hey what about," it usually almost immediately answered in the story soon after.

The audiobook is absolutely fantastic. The narrator brings a new level of depth to this story, and seems to have decent range of voices that is very believable. In the first book, she really paints out the use of foreign language so well I was sad there wasn't more of it. To me, listening to the new version really makes me visualize "the Hopper" as it's called and the mystery of Eliana discovering the nature of Kakul.

Fun and intelligent Sci-Fi

M.G. Herron gives us a ton of meat to chew on in this series. One of the best parts of audible is getting a whole series for one credit. This is one of those that'll keep you interested start to finish. The use of made up tech/alien artifacts never feels contrived and carries the reader into a world filled with modern and ancient cultures reminiscent of (the feel of) Star Wars. Don't misunderstand... there's nothing Star Warsy about this series—its just the new and old mesh that's so great in both.

Tess Irondale reads beautifully and engages the listener with a performance to remember.

Pick it up. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Started out promising, ending in a slog.

Disclaimer: As of this writing I'm only 2/3rds of the way through the book.

The first 1/3rd of this book showed some great promise! I enjoyed where it was going, enjoyed the mystery and the exposure to the worlds rules and was excited to see where it went after I finished the first arc.

Then everything fell apart. Eliana becomes an emotion fueled brat of a child where every single one of her actions is not justifiable. The storyline with Lucas is a mess of nonsense. Nothing makes sense. The drama is mind numbing. The pacing fell apart. The main antagonist is equal parts "all powerful" and also apparently vulnerable to a human girl and sharp rocks.

Honestly, the book had so much promise, and I'll stick with it through the 3rd arc due to the performance being top notch and a hope that things will be salvaged, but I'm sure I'll be disappointed. It feels like the entire second arc could have been removed, with the last 15 minutes of exposition jammed into some other part of the book, and nothing of value would be lost.

The second arc does nothing but poke holes in its own narrative and cause all of the world building to completely fall apart. It tries to answer so many questions the reader may have, and does so in such a hamfisted and illogical way, that it ruins every ounce of immersion it had built up to that point.

Stay away unless you're a big Tess Irondale fan.

just not really that interesting

story really breaks down into 3 novellas that directly follow each other more than a single narrative, and that's how the story beats play out. but there's just not that much to really engross me in the characters. A few key moments stuck out as emotionally gripping, but the story as a whole just felt a little hollow. I fell asleep listening to the last 90 minutes and don't feel any need to go back and catch the ending.

the chain of events are not very plausible

the chain of events that occurs are just implausible.... like how long it takes the government to take over the site, after an alien comes through the rift and kills 5 people. also the main character has the nerve to be mad at her husband LOL after she endangered the native tribe so she could try to get some pictures of a temple talk about selfish and self-absorbed.

Couldn’t stop

Its like the parts of my favorite books and movies combined into one. This series was addicting.

Just don’t.

This story had promise but the writer seemed to think telling not showing was a better style. Lots of words with minimal content.

It seemed pretty clear that the author had a word of the day calendar on their desk. Several words were used repeatedly in a two minute period of time, and were frequently followed by a dictionary definition. I don’t just mean three or four times in two minutes, I mean well over ten times. The words I remember being beaten over the head with the most were:
fricative
ichor (specifically green)
keening
carapace
cenote

If you don’t know the meaning of these words then you certainly will by the end.

As for the narrator, I thought she did very well with the content at hand.

Disappointing

No clear picture of where you were going with this book. Poor development of characters with a flood of technology intended to confuse the audience, and correct your lack of skill as a writer .

Mostly social dialog and narrative

The script uses imaginary crystals found near an old meteor impact location to make a space drive, no technical details were defined other than that. The space drive is then destroyed by the military due to fear of the unknown.

Slow to star

I found the start of this book abit slow to get going, but once it did I thought the story was well laid out with a few twists and turns that kept me listening, although there was a few unanswered questions which left me a little disappointed
But overall a very interesting listen!