Waking Spero

The Spero Trilogy, Vol 1

De: IQ Malcolm

Narrado por: Savannah Adkins

Crashed without a clue. Stranded on a strange world. Caught in the fight of their lives.

Aspiring teenaged artist Unai thought he was free from facing struggle like his father. But he’d rather be back in his family butcher shop when he wakes in a downed escape pod with a feral girl and cute-looking kid cadet on a faraway planet. And with carnage on the horizon and a gap in his memories, he’ll need more than his artistic instincts to stay alive.

2045 is the last year that Space Force Academy recruit Clover can remember. And though she’s desperate to honor her father’s military legacy by surviving the massive impact, she fears her two charges are casualties waiting to happen. So she goes with the only viable option: Take the lead to guarantee all three make it through the alien jungle’s deadly night...

Battling conflicting personalities and dodging close encounters with native creatures, Unai struggles to keep it together in the hostile environment. And Clover finds herself stretched to the limit keeping everybody alive when their search for answers unleashes an avalanche of peril.

Can they survive the savage lands before the extraterrestrial wildlife tears them apart?

Waking Spero is the engrossing first book in the Spero Trilogy YA science fiction series. If you like thrilling surprises, friendships forged under pressure, and otherworldly quests, then you’ll love IQ Malcolm’s fast-paced adventure.

Buy Waking Spero to explore the extraordinary today!

©2020 IQ Malcolm (P)2020 IQ Malcolm

Great sci fi!

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review

This book has a little bit of everything: thriller, romance, drama, action and so much more! I loved the whole thing.

The characters were good but this was geared to a younger audience so they were not as deep as they could have been. The dialogue was geared towards said younger audience as well. Overall it was an easy read. The narrator was not bad but could have added a bit more "oomph" to the book to really get it going.

Wonderful

Unai & Clover..... way smarter than your average teenagers. Can’t wait to see where they go from here. Stranded on a planet they don’t know anything about. Destined to move forward and learn all they can. I keep imagining everything described and wishing I could be an explorer too.... except when there are giant spiders and bog worms!
Narration by Savannah Adkins was incredible. Loved loved loved this book!
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Action-packed YA sci-fi

*I was gifted a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.*

The good:
The author plunges into the action; he’s not afraid you’ll get lost without pages of backstory. I like an author who trusts his reader to keep up and doesn’t unnecessarily explain things. This stayed true throughout. He doesn’t explain jokes or asides: if you don’t get it you don’t get it. I think all the pop culture references will be a hit with younger readers. There is enough of a conclusion to feel like the time spent with these characters wasn't wasted, but enough of a question mark at the end of the book to draw you into keeping up with the series.

The not so good:
The audiobook narrator reads this more like a newscaster than a fiction reader, and it’s a bit distracting (also - just my pet peeve - there’s no “x” in “especially”).
Some of the dialogue here is a bit cringey, but I think the characters will resonate more with younger readers than middle-aged (me), and that is the intention after all. I just wasn’t able to suspend my disbelief enough to find any of the conversations believable in the circumstances the characters find themselves.

However, I give the book 4/5 stars because I feel like this is a fast-paced, easy, exciting read that young readers would really be drawn to. I have nephews in the 11-14 age range and I think they'd really enjoy this.

Pretty Good Overall

This is a rather interesting story, following three teenage kids, Unai, Clover and Elana, who were in a starship in cryo-pods travelling through space, when their ship has some sort of catastrophic accident, and they crash on a planet. They are ejected in a crash pod, there were ten in the ejection pod, but seven were killed on impact.
The three that survive, are a Unai, young guy who was training to be a butcher with his Father, but really had his heart set on being an artist. The next is a strong willed, military cadet, whose Father has a Military Legacy, and Clover is determined to honour it by making sure the other two in the escape pod survive.
The third is a fascinating character, and leads to one of the stories plot lines, in that Elana, a young woman, cannot speak. The ship has been in hyperspace for over 2 million years, and during that time, whilst in cryo-sleep, the passengers have started to de-evolve, in that they have started to lose brain function, the cryo-chambers have started to breakdown the neural pathways, and we are reverting to a lesser state of intelligence as such. As a result, Elana wakes up almost feral like, like a scared animal, and acting on animal instincts, fight or flight mode, as her higher thinking centres are gone, and that includes her language ability.
The three of them find themselves on an alien planet, with very limited supplies (I don’t want to give too much away), and with the goal of trying to get rescued, Clover takes lead given her background and training.
This is definitely a young adult story, the way it is written, the dialogue between the main characters, and the way it reads, but it is interesting enough that anyone can read it and enjoy it. It has a mix of survival, thriller, action, a bit of romance, and a fair bit of humour. With 2 teenagers and an Author who thinks that all teenagers do is snipe at each other constantly with sarcastic comments, (which, let’s face it, are they wrong?), there is a lot of humourous moments.
The world building is exceptional, and is probably one of the most outstanding parts of this book. The Author has put a lot of time and effort and thought into this alien world, the plants, animals, alien structures, even the insects. It is a very well crafted and creative back drop to the story, and because so much effort has gone into it, it adds a lot of depth to the story, and allows the Author to use it in the story as well. There are some striking similarities to ‘Pandora’ from Avatar, in that the descriptions of the night-time ecosphere of the planet was very reminiscent of the bio-luminescent plants that were on Pandora. But the Author has done a remarkable job of describing this, and it is obviously different, and who says that planets wouldn’t have a similar plant life?
Given the limited range of Characters to work with, the Author had to make a real effort with those that they had, how they used them. Each Chapter alternates between Unai and Clover’s point of view, which makes for a really interesting perspective of the story, there is some overlap in a few places, but for the most part, it is one continuous story just told from one or other of the two main characters. As they go along, because they to have had some memory loss, and do not have full recall of who they are, they are constantly discussing their histories, trying to remember things, and in this way, we get to learn about the characters. It is a very clever way of introducing the characters. Of course, this leaves out Elana, but as the story goes along, we get to hear what each of the two think about her, and her background as well, and we at least learn some things about her.
I am not going to go into too much detail about what happens, as I don’t want to give anything away. I will say, that there are a lot of different things that happen to the 3 young adventurers, and it makes for a really interesting read as they try and battle for survival on this alien world, and work their way towards what they think is the wreckage of a crashed ship, in hopes of getting rescued.
The Author has thought a lot about the interactions between the characters, at the intellectual level and the physical level. Whilst to a large degree this book is entertaining, I did find that some of the dialogue was a bit grating at times. Unai has this habit of constantly saying sarcastic, or what he thinks are ‘Funny’ comments, but what are really annoying comments, and after about 15mins of being there, most people would have yelled at him to shut up, or duct-taped his mouth closed. On the other side, Clover is a bossy, conceited know-it-all, who just issues orders and expects them to be followed like a drill sergeant, and yet she has absolutely no authority, there wasn’t even a discussion about it.
I just found the dialogue to be somewhat unrealistic, and very over the top, both characters were like the worst case scenarios of their stereotype. I felt really sorry for poor Elana, who had to listen to all of it, and couldn’t actually respond. Hopefully she couldn’t understand most of it!!
But this is my only real complaint about the book, other than that, it is a really fun read, with a lot of interesting stuff. Hopefully, the Author tones the dialogue down a bit in the second book, as this will make a really interesting and fascinating series, to see how it plays out. It actually had a really good ending, and I am interested to see what happens in book 2.
Savannah Adkins does a good job with this book, she has a clear and concise voice that is easy to understand, and she has a nice voice that is very pleasant to listen to. She does good character voices, male and female (although we did only have a limited selection), but she conveyed the emotions of her characters as well, so we really understood how they felt as she told their story. Overall, the Narrator did a great job!!

Excellent Book and Narration!

What a book! Immaculate story and even better narration! The author did a phenomenal job in both orchestrating the book as well as choosing the appropriate narrator! I wish I could give it 10 stars!!! Definitely recommending it to my peers!

Stranded on a strange world without a clue.

This is a rather interesting story, following three teenage kids, Unai, Clover and Elana, who were in a starship in cryo-pods travelling through space, when their ship has some sort of catastrophic accident, and they crash on a planet. They are ejected in a crash pod, there were ten in the ejection pod, but seven were killed on impact. It stars off al little slow and was hard for me to get into it but as it went on I found my self wanted to know more and where the story would lead, and looking forward to more books!

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.