Legion of Traitors

An Exile War Novel

De: Bowen Greenwood

Narrado por: Son of Sonnet

Once, telepaths almost wiped out humankind. Centuries later, a brotherhood called the Gentle Hand lives to keep it from happening again. But war is coming, and they are not prepared.

Langston Wheeler survives the first strike in an interstellar war. The young telepath comes home to warn his fellow Gentle Hands of a shadowy threat already at their door. But his message falls on deaf ears, not least because everyone remembers his infamous dalliance with a woman he should never have loved.

Cleo Sable endured nearly six years of exile before the call came, summoning her back to Earth for the war. Coming home is sweet. Sweeter still is the thought of the man she left behind -- the man for whom she gave up everything. But the first thing she sees on the voyage out of exile is Langston Wheeler in the arms of another woman.

Lang and Cleo must face their past and understand their future, if they have one. But the rules of the Gentle Hand won't let them be together, and the war won't give them time to figure it out. Each must choose between the path of service and the path of power, with no guarantee that the other will make the same choice. Their decisions echo across the stars as cataclysmic war explodes all around them, plunging the Gentle Hand into a bloody fight for their very survival.

©2021 Bowen Greenwood (P)2025 Bowen Greenwood

Fun ride even for first-timers

I volunteered to read this book without having read the first book in order to help gauge its readability by others in my same situation; I've had the series on my TBR forever, so this seemed like a good opportunity to finally dive in! And considering I enjoyed it a lot, I'd say it's perfectly readable even if you haven't read the series opener. Yes, you kind of get thrown into the middle of a situation in this book and there are some things you feel like you may have missed out on, but there's enough background info shared that you still get a sense of what happened and what's currently going on. All it did was make me want to go back and read the first book even more!

The narration was absolutely phenomenal. I've been really bad about getting sleepy while trying to read physical books or ebooks lately, and that definitely wasn't a problem with this audiobook. It was so engaging! Every primary character had a unique voice, and the pacing and drama came across great. I did have a little bit of trouble keeping track of who some of the characters were (though I think I had everybody figured out pretty well by the end) but I mainly attribute this to me being a very visual learner and I wasn't able to see the names written on the page.

This one does start out a little slow, but the world-building is rich and I love the concept behind the telepathy ("magic system" if this was a fantasy book). The Gentle Hands vs. Archons setup feels very Star Wars, a classic Jedi vs. Sith scenario. Much of the tension throughout the book was interpersonal or political, but the last several chapters consist of a final battle sequence that was very cinematic. I was picturing everything in my head exactly like a movie. There was also a nice plot twist about halfway through that caught me by surprise, although looking back now, I see how things were leading up to it. Very nicely executed.

I'll definitely be checking out the remainder of the series now!