Chimera's Star

Frontier Magic, Book 1 (Starship's Mage, Book 14)

De: Glynn Stewart

Narrado por: Jeffrey Kafer

History holds many secrets. The frontier holds many shadows.

One ship may damn all mankind. One ship may save them.

In a bold and brazen act of treachery, the Royal Martian Navy exploratory cruiser Rose was stolen and is now in the hands of the conspiracy group known as Nemesis. Guilty of a thousand crimes, Nemesis and its leader, Kent Riley, are determined to find proof of the alien threat they have secretly been preparing humanity to face.

Set in pursuit by the Mage-Queen of Mars herself, Mage-Captain Roslyn Chambers commands Rose's sister ship, Thorn, in a chase that brings her to the far reaches of the galaxy. Her orders are clear: bringing Nemesis to justice and, if at all possible, prevent them from waking a sleeping beast.

Riley will find the enemy at any cost. Chambers will stop him. Among lost worlds and ancient crimes, the secrets of the past both seek may mean nothing—or everything.

©2024 Glynn Stewart (P)2024 Podium Audio

Too many plot holes and contrived events

Spoiler ahead


I feel like this is written not by the same author at time. If you all have suicide devices and your ship gets boarded trigger them all? Nope.
Why the last minute interception of the ship? Seems contrived. 15 minutes either way and suddenly the story is different. Loyal ship officers having mental breakdown and deleting data?
The artificial anger of the politicians of Chimera, once they knew they got fooled? Give them the information and get them moving to save everyone.

Excited to start the next series of the Starship Mage saga

For ages I've wondered, where are the aliens that came to Mars and built the Olympus Mons amplifier? What have they been up to since they disappeared two centuries ago?Now we get to find out and it's worth the wait!

Some weird, jarring disconnects

Another semi-spin off of Starship's Mage continuing the story of Rosalyn Chambers. Overall a pretty decent story in the broad strokes. The Nemesis POV is nice, though they still don't really get into what exactly Nemesis knows that caused all the chaos they've sown, or at least I hope not because the very little they have shown that they know is pretty bare bones. But seeing things from their POV and getting some more info on their higher ups is definitely welcomed after all the shadowplay of the previous books.

The weird thing for me, and this might just be because I am a veteran, is how fragile the navy personnel in this story are portrayed. The navy crew really feels like they're written as a freighter crew more so than trained, experienced combat veterans which is what most of them are. Sure there's passing note that they have more Midshipmen than they should have but all of the transfer crew are noted as being experienced system defense personnel. But as soon as their exposed to evidence that alien worlds were bombarded centuries before any of them were born they're all breaking down, brawling, going catatonic, etc over that information. I just cannot see that response, it's jarring and doesn't make sense for who they're supposed to be. If they were civilians that were first running into the evidence of an old war I could see them being horrified and having to process, and even if they just had sections were the navy personnel were processing the scope and getting spooked would be fine. However there's a whole subplot where a senior chief goes berserk, punches their superior officer out, fights some marines, an then goes catatonic after scanning one of the planets. That person does not exist as a senior NCO in a combat era military, particularly since planetary bombardment is explicitly stated as something that hasn't happened so it's not like it could trigger some sort of PTSD from previous experience.

That whole section threw me way out of the story, and luckily they only make off-hand mention that three more sensor techs melted down in a later chapter, but from that point on I kind of had to fight my way back into the story and it really damaged my mental image of how professional the navy personnel actually are which I'm guessing was not the intention. Its not enough to ruin the story but it caused some major whiplash for me at least.

Performance wise you're getting exactly what you got in all the other books, Jeffery Kafer continues to be a solid narrator, no weird hiccups or quirks in any of the character presentations that aren't the result of the writing. Most of the key characters have a distinct voice so it's easy enough to tell who's talking when when going through dialogue and any mistakes or retakes that are well edited around so as not to pull you out. Overall great work and easy to listen to.

Antagonist is a letdown

Antagonist felt significantly less competent in this novel than in earlier works.

= vague spoilers =
Only someone incompetent looks at a potential enemy with a known 3+ century tech advantage and then decides to poke them based on assumptions about what they can and cannot do. A single glimpse at the larger enemy’s home system should have been enough to suggest going elsewhere to do more scouting. It’s like if somebody went to an Amish town in the Midwest (knowing it’s well behind the tech and magic curve) and then said to themselves “yeah, based on this I think I could sneak into a futuretech DARPA facility in San Francisco”.
= end spoilers =

Since the antagonist is well established from earlier novels it seemed extremely forced. This is made worse considering we were also supposed to believe the partner he was playing grabass with was super intelligent.

Outside of that though protagonists were consistent with what we’d seen previously, none of the new tech or powers felt unbelievable, and the expansion on the lore and state of the Galaxy was done well. Everything moved forward interestingly except the guy who was forced to hold the idiot ball. Audio performance was solid given what they had to work with.

Great space actions as always.

a bit heavy on the K. story part. necessary exposition but you got to power through some of it. Good read. Now waiting for next one.

Finally getting to meet the aliens.

After hearing about the aliens that forced magic into our species through selective breeding. we get to see what they are like.

Great set up!

This book sets up the conclusion to the story starting with the unanswered questions of the first book. Absolutely worth a listen

Incredible book!

The Starship's Mage universe is one of my favorite by Glynn Stewart and this one doesn't disapoint!

Clearly a bridge book to continue the series

!Warning spoilers!
This is the weakest book in the series. At least the filler books seem to be ending as it is clear that this book is a bridge to the next arch. What makes this book the weakest is that Nemesis the big bad villain of the last several books begins to act so dumb and the justification is fairly weak. The author hints and the existential crisis faced by the villain but never dwells too long on it and doesn’t explore it deeply enough to make it impactful. Also the romantic subplot and attempt to humanize the villain was dumb, waste of text and the “payoff” wasn’t worth it. The “big” reveal was so obvious I guessed it with in the first chapter.
*Spoiler* Nemesis causes the very thing he fought to prevent. While the plot of this book is paper thin it was well written and sets up the series to do new a cool things. I just wish the author wasn’t so focused on the setup for the next arch and took the time to develop this actual story.

Love the Nathan Lowell reference!

Another great entry into the Starship's Mage saga whose greatest sin is ending too soon. Great fun exploring new sci-fi delights with a delightful easter egg for readers of Nathan Lowell's Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series. Great job Glynn and Jeffrey!