The Void Wars: Collection I

By: Michael G. Thomas

Narrated by: Nigel Peever

Length: 27 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

A Void Wars Omnibus Series

The Void Wars is a brand-new military sci-fi series by acclaimed science fiction author Michael G. Thomas. For the first time experience the epic battles and heroes of World War II set in a fictional futuristic universe, where fleets of kilometre long starships fight to the death, and entire worlds are consumed in the flames of war. This omnibus edition includes the full editions of the first three books in the epic series.

This edition includes:

Star Dreadnought Bismarck (The Void Wars Book 1)

Battle Fleet Warspite (The Void Wars Book 2)

Planet Strike Tobruk (The Void Wars Book 3)

©2023 Michael G. Thomas (P)2023 Swordworks

Dry and uninspired

I received a free review copy of this audio book, at my request, and am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review.

I received The Void Wars Collection 1, which includes the first 3 books. This review only covers book 1, as that's as much as I could handle.

This book is a point by point description of the events that lead up to the battle with a space ship nicknamed the Bismarck. It outlines the people involved, ships used, shots fired, ships lost and the outcome. What's missing is a story and more importantly characters.

This book is dry. It doesn't develop any of the characters, doesn't establish an overall world, or backdrop, or have any emotional context at all. We never learn anything about the enemy or their motivations. It reads like a text book.

In preparation for this review, I read what others were saying about this book, and it seems this is play by play what happened in WW2, between the British and the Germans. Some are saying down to the officers names. This may be true, I don't know enough about the details to say, but it reads like the author had to hand in an assignment on the Bismark, but had to change it just enough to not be "copying".

This wouldn't be an issue, except, there is no personality to any of the characters. No hopes and dreams, no back story, no personal relationships. This book goes from the events of one engagement to the next with no story building in between. We are never introduced to the Commonwealth society, whether they are actually the good guys or not, how civilians live, etc.

Similarly, we have no information about the enemy. Why they are aggressive, what they hope to achieve, consequences of loosing to them, what it will take to win against them, if they are human...

This is 10 hours, about hunting 1 ship, when none of the characters are developed and frankly we're never given a reason to care if they live or die.

What we are given, is snippets of exposition dumps at the start of each chapter, from fictional text books, about the void wars. Again, there is no insight into the story, just more technical information about the ships and battles.

Voice narration, by Neigel Peever, was mostly well done. He has a decent range of voices and can do a passable female voice. His voice was easy to listen to, but I did find it too slow. I generally don't speed up books, but I had this playing at 1.7x and wasn't really missing anything.

This is a full audio experience, with background music, sound effects, etc. It is a constant audio assault. When I first started listening to audio books, I thought I liked this, but I realized quickly that this isn't for me. Its not good or bad, just personal taste. I would have perfered the book without it.

All in all, I didn't care for this book. The voice narration was the high point, and that was preformed well, but the pace was too slow. The book is dry and uninspired. Or more actually is too inspired by real events, and no work was done to build on the human experience and emotional journeys of anyone involved.

I will not be continuing this series.

excellent story and narration

enjoyable story lots of action right from the start enjoyable narration I love it

It's WWII in space.

and it's awesome I can't wait for the next line up to hit audible so I can immerse myself into it