Psi Wars: Homecoming

Psi Wars, Book 1

De: Rick Partlow

Narrado por: Derek Shoales

You can't outrun your past....

Korri Fontenot left family behind on Earth a century ago to fight in a war that broke her body and her mind. Now, her great-granddaughter, Jackie, has followed in her footsteps.

First as a Marine and then as a mercenary outlaw, Jackie has made the mistake of breaking into a secret corporate lab and stealing an ancient alien artifact.

Dark forces want the artifact back.

Only Korri can save her from the assassins on her trail.

What starts out as a fight against ruthless mercenaries leads them far outside human space, and into the remnants of a fallen empire. For the artifact that Jackie stole isn't just alien treasure, it's a weapon with the power to restart an ancient war—a war that could bring down all of human civilization.

For fans of galaxy-spanning military space operas like James S. A. Corey's The Expanse and Richard Fox's Ember War series.

©2023 Rick Partlow (P)2024 Tantor

Rick Partlow does it again

overall story was very good the recording does seem to have a hollow Sound to it but after an hour or two I didn’t notice it anymore. Definitely worth the credit.

Somewhat undermined by the narration

The narration made this book somewhat hard to follow. Probably the worst aspect was the fact that the various characters were hardly distinguishable. From what I could actually hear, the plot concept was pretty good.

In summary, a (adult-aged) granddaughter discovers, and accidentally bonds with, an advanced technology from a long-extinct alien race. This makes her a lucrative target for many competing interests who want to study this ancient technology. Her grandmother, an experienced warrior from a past war and rejuvenated by modern technologies, attempts to rescue and protect her granddaughter, as they also try to free her from this technological wonder. In doing so, they discover the causes of the downfall of the alien race who invented the tech.

Halting narration, uninteresting characters and universe

Narration seemed "off" with a breathless, choppy cadence, and undue emphasis on various parts of phrases and sentences that didn't fit the context. I seriously wondered if the voice was artificially generated. Character voices weren't differentiated very well so it was often hard to tell who was speaking.

The story is marketed as the first in a series, but it jumps in and spreads out amongst many characters that apparently know each other from earlier, different series. Without that earlier familiarity and background, and world building, I never grew to care about the characters.

It also jumps around between time-frames without skipping a beat, so I was often confused about what was happening. I was particularly confused when it repeated a few paragraphs verbatim; I thought it was poorly edited, but it was repeating scenes from another perspective without audio or contextual clues.

First names or last names were both randomly used for characters at different times. I had to replay sections to figure out the whole name for several characters and the various ways they were addressed -- 2 characters or 2 names for 1 character.

If I had grown to know these characters in a prior series, I might have been more invested. As it is, this one ends in a cliffhanger and I won't continue the series.

The narrator is awful couldn’t finish.

The narrator is so bad that I couldn’t listen to enough of the book to understand the story. Not credit worthy.