With Your Shield

Four Horsemen Tales, Book 10

By: Chris Kennedy, Alex Rath

Narrated by: James Patrick Cronin

Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's Summary

Come back with your shield...or on it!

Staff Sergeant Markus "Spartan" Nicolos is one of the Intelligence Department’s best. A hacker who can beat any code, he’s in charge of communications intercepts for the Golden Horde’s Computer Operations section. When people can’t break a code, they bring in Spartan.

It wasn’t always this way, though. Spartan used to be a frontline CASPer pilot - someone who could be counted on to get the job done and bring the squad home safely...until he lost his entire squad in an ambush. He also lost his edge in the attack, and he swore he would never pilot a CASPer in combat again.

Everything changed, though, when he came up with an idea for a new type of scout CASPer - one that would prevent what happened to him from ever happening again. He’s been given a mech to convert and a team to help him bring his idea to reality. And he’s been given a chance to test it out on a Golden Horde deployment.

But in the time immediately before the events of the Omega War, forces are already moving behind the scenes, and nothing is as it seems...and they’re bringing along Spartan’s combat mech - which he said he’d never pilot in combat again - just in case.

©2019 Chris Kennedy and Alex Rath (P)2020 Podium Publishing

Great but seems Out of Order

Book 10 of the Tales of the 4 Horseman Series is another exciting 4 Horsemen adventure focusing on The Golden Horde, although it's distressingly short at under 7 hrs. I feel like it should have had other stories in it to 1) have it make sense to be in the "Tales" Series & be at least 10 hours, preferably up to 14 or 16.

The biggest thing that seemed odd to me was that the events seem to take place BEFORE Book 9 & maybe even 8?

I would have preferred to have read this before reading Book 9 at the least, possibly sooner.

This was another single story rather than a collection of tales by multiple authors. I don't mind it being a single 'long' short story, but I'd think that it should be in the main 4 Horsemen Series, not in the "TaleS" Series? when I see the plural word "TaleS" I expect a minimum of 2 TaleS, but preferably, (& I would say all "Tales of" books I have read by other authors have always had 8-12 short stories in them in memory serves, like "Hope is Not a Strategy" - that's what I feel most readers would expect.

Selling a 6 something hour book as a TaleS series seems a bit of a rip off & what too many authors are doing nowadays- taking what used to be a decently long or a gratifyingly long book & splitting into 2, sometimes even 4-6 "books" that are 4-7 hrs long to make more money. I get Authors need to get paid for their work & deservedly so, but taking a 30 hr book, for example, & breaking it into 5 6 hour books is something I won't buy out of principle & has caused me to miss some works I really wanted to read.

Fortunately many of those eventually change them into Volumes/Collections Books, Volumes 1, 2 & 3 of XYZ Series & then I finally get to check them out & feel like I've actually gotten a a reasonable length book when 2 stories are put in the Volumes at 12 hrs total, or preferably as Vols 1 &2 at 18 hrs ea, for this example.

Please note NOT SAYING the authors of the two 4 Horsemen Series do that. I'm sorry I just went out on a rant about my pet peeve, short books, which are quickly becoming the norm & the current inflation of prices for every thing keeps skyrocketing.

Basically I'm saying this a great story, the narrator does a wonderful job too, but it IS a bit of disappointment having only the 1 story & being so short. I don't think I would've paid a full credit for it & I'm extremely glad I was able to get it at the huge 2022 end of year sale at, what seemed to me, a fair price for it's length, because otherwise I most likely would've passed it by for the next one, which hopefully is longer & has more stories in it!

SHORT SUMMARY: It IS a great addition to the 4HU & I'm so glad I got to hear it, but it IS short & it IS Only 1 Tale & as such seems like it's in the wrong series & (probably most importantly) it really seems like it's occurring before events in "Hunter," so I would have preferred to read this before, rather than after, but who knows, maybe I'm turning into a complaining old person who's getting slightly senile "sh#☆" from shinola, especially as this has got to be one of the world's longest run on sentances! ;)

Awesome

The audio book version is so much better than just reading the book. I am looking forward to more books with spartan and his team!