Cold Solar: A Dark and Gritty Sci-Fi Action Thriller

The Inner Solar War, Book 1

By: Anthony Robinson

Narrated by: Alan Medcroft

A dark and gritty thriller set in a dystopian near-future Los Angeles the year 2048. Written in the spirits of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and Tom Clancy. Gripping characters are put through hell pursuing a worthy goal in a thrilling story of war, romance, betrayal, and secrets.

A private corporation lands on Mars before NASA in the 2020s. The secrets they learn from the Martian rock revolutionize energy and genetics for those exposed to an ancient artifact of unknown origin. On Earth, mismanagement of the world economy led to a global collapse. The corporation, rich from its exploits on Mars, buys out the debt of the world governments and takes total control of the globe. Corporate greed drives Earth to treat her own Martian colonies as slaves for personal gain. These colonies throw off the corporate oppression in a violent revolution.

Fast forward to the year 2048 and Bowen, a competition fighter with a twisted sense of sarcastic humor, witnesses his world being ripped in half when the Martian colonists come back bringing a tidal wave of vengeance. In order to survive and stop the horrific violence, he learns he must bring a naïve princess of the Martian Empire to safety.

Joanna, a cold-hearted warrior and personal guard of the princess, harbors deep hatred for the corporation and the people of Earth who killed everyone she once held dear on Mars. She learns her leaders are not who they say they are and finds herself caught in the middle of a deep conspiracy fabricated to create the war. She senses her confused feelings toward Bowen constantly splitting between wanting to kill him and wanting to kiss him.

Vladimir, a boisterous alcoholic with a passion for archery, has his nice vacation in Los Angeles turned into a harrowing fight for survival. With luck, skill, and a lot of vodka, he manages to meet up with others seeking to end the war. His attention keeps getting distracted by a hot computer hacker running surveillance for him and his team.

Low spent her whole adult life working as a computer hacker for the corporation. All she’s ever known is punching binary numbers and loyalty to her employers. Upon working an assignment with a crack team thrown together at the last minute, she learns she can trust no one in her chain of command.

Large powers are committing violent acts to keep the war going, but working together with Bowen, Joanna, and Vladimir, she thinks they might be just enough to set things right.

An action thriller with a mix of sci-fi, mystery, and romance.

Cold Solar contains soft sci-fi elements with near-future technology. That means it's written with simple scientific principles that anyone can understand and enjoy. It's targeted toward a general audience, so there's no lengthy discussions on chemistry or physics. It possesses just enough sci-fi to get you right back to the fast-paced plot!

©2017 Anthony Robinson (P)2021 Anthony Robinson

Late night surprise

The writing quickly made the characters from both sides relatable. The choice of Alan Medcroft was spot on. I’m left frustrated because I don’t know what the MC is going to do next. I think he’s lined up to make a poor choice but I can’t tell..

Swords, SciFi and Intrigue

This book was a pleasant surprise. I found the characters interesting. The plot focused and the book well narrated. As it's the first of 3 books I'm waiting for the 2nd and 3rd books to release on audiobook. Give this book a listen if you want to try something a little different in the sci-fi genre.

Ending???

It was a good story overall but didn’t care for the cliff hanger ending. After establishing a character over the entire book it seemed a disservice to have them question their sense of self.

A Paint By Numbers Mil Sci-Fi

A basic military sci-fi full of all of the expected tropes from a Mars vs Earth conflict. Stir in a Princess MacGuffin, a few testosterone laden Mary Sues suffering from manufactured drama and some deus ex machina hand waving and you got a mechanical story that was saved by a great narrator. The story opens with a Mars that is under an authoritarian feudalistic society of mutant humans that evolved for a rebellious mining colony. Apparently despite the vast superiority of power, tech and genes, they are still in danger of checkin’ out and they blame earth for their situation. On the other hand, a rather incompetent and weak earth is now ruled by corporations after having bought up all of the sovereign debt (so the setup is a huge stretch for anything other than a comic book story).

For some reason, Martians run around with hand weapons (sword, mace, spear), invulnerable suits of armor and mutant genes that give them enough of an advantage over earth forces that we get plenty of gratuitous and graphic violence. Finally I would say that the world building is pretty lazy with very little thought put into how any of the story elements (spaceships, naval ships, laser lines, communications, computer hacking, et al) would realistically work … which was amusing in the beginning, but it quickly wore out its appeal. However, I thought that the pacing was actually pretty good, with only a short section in the middle that started to drag while a clumsy, slow burn romance starts up (and more or less hints at a big reveal that sort of fizzled when it happened) … and all of the sword fights were pretty cool for a futuristic space war story where standoff weapons are mysteriously absent.

I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

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Decent storyline

Premise is interesting. Mars vs Earth. And the premise of Earth ruled by corporations is pretty believable. The romance scenes are pretty cringy. The narrator’s accent is distracting, since the story is based in LA and a few voices are strange. Decent narrator, just not the right choice for this story. Overall, not bad, and I was entertained.

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