Crisis Moon

By: Michael McGruther

Narrated by: Jack Clancy

Space shrapnel knocks a satellite repairman out of orbit. Power and communications go dark around the globe. Boot prints are discovered on the Moon where no human has ever set foot. There’s a crisis on the Moon, and the United States is about to uncover a nightmare scenario that could mean the end of the republic.

©2020 Michael McGruther (P)2020 Michael McGruther

Captivating Story

This is the first book that I have listened to written by Michael Mcgruther. This author has the ability to paint vivid scenes with words that trigger images and the senses. The characters are well crafted and relatable. This exciting, thought provoking story grabbed and held my attention. Jack Clancy's performance was spot on. I was provided free review copy of this audio book and am voluntarily leaving this review.

Delivers what’s on the tin

This book delivers. Solid narrator that keeps you engrossed throughout. Solid science bits that are sufficiently realistic and tangible without being overdone. Plot. Like able characters... although they don’t really develop much.

Oh, and action:!bombs in space!
Oh, and private space craft.
And I cannot fail to mention: the emerging enemy of the 2020s America: China.

Really liked this one. It looks short, but it is exactly the right length for the story it tells.

I received this audiobook for free in exchange for a review.

Putting the fiction in science fiction

This story puts the fiction in science fiction. It’s a light read. I had fun with it. Some of the banter and slang makes it feel like it’s set in the 1980s instead of present day. And yet the premise of the story grabbed my attention and held it all the way through.

The US government is concerned that another country has put people on the moon – perhaps just for a visit or perhaps for longer. Now they need a discreet team to get their butts up there as soon as possible. So they bring in this somewhat eccentric guy, Jim, who has is own little company that has been focused on putting average people in space. They have their own little space shuttle. A small team of specialists is tossed together. Christine is a selenologist (moon specialist). Hector is a specialist in hand-to-hand fighting but doubles as the team’s emergency medic. There’s a few more as well but I don’t recall much of what they did. Perhaps they were just the Red Shirts.

Anyhoo, there’s roughly 3 months of training and prep. Admittedly, this middle part of the story was a little slow. Then they head off to the moon. The story had characters explaining simple, basic space flight things to other characters and I did scratch my head a bit. Like they just did 3 months of training. They covered this….. or they didn’t which means Jim’s company really isn’t great at mastering space flight for the average person.

When the team gets to the moon, things pick up again. Plenty of action scenes, some deaths, etc. The characters are a bit one-dimensional in these scenes, including the people they find up there. I would have liked more depth for all the characters but the illegal moon inhabitants were bad caricatures. They came off pretty flat.

The story had very few female characters. I really only recall Christine. The story would have benefited from more diversity over all. I also felt that Hector’s role was underutilized. He’s our best close quarters fighter and yet he doesn’t get to do what he’s good at. The story also had to turn Christine from a useful scientist into a romantic interest. Over all, 3/5 stars.

The Narration: Jack Clancy did an OK job. He had the good old boy voices down. His voice for Christine was good, it sounded feminine. I was not a fan of his Spanish accent for Hector. It sounded over done, a little like the cartoon Speedy Gonzalez. His Chinese accents were rough and could use some polishing. The pacing was good. There were 1 or 2 sentences that were repeated in this recording but otherwise, no tech issues. 3.5/5 stars.

I received a free copy of this book from Audiobooks Unleashed. My opinions are 100% my own.

Patriotism risky mangement

This was a review copy I received an it was an enjoyable read I felt like I truly was seeing a future of of the space exploration. The novel hit on many under currents between patriotism and capitalism in current and future industries in America has compies slowly gain the power to exceed in pursuits that would take a nation severely years to work threw do it also showed that fine line that link individuals to there homeland to better protect them. Do I did have some dislikes like Male to female ration was off like only 3 females in the whole novel and the narrator could have work on the voices abit more they sound abit to manly and there were times the narrator sped up in voice then slow down around the middle chs.

Believable sci-fi but was bored through most of it

This book and its plot are very believable as something that could happen in the near future. I think that, combined with the narrator, was one of the pluses with CRISIS MOON. But . . .

In the middle of this book I had the sudden thought ... what if Matthew Reilly had a shot at writing this? There are some similarities between CRISIS MOON and Reilly's Jack West Jr. series, at least when it comes to geopolitics and gathering a group of individuals together to beat the big baddie. Now that I think about it, maybe there aren't that many similarities, but I think Reilly could do wonders with this premise.

Why do I think Reilly could have done this better? You know what you get with a Reilly book: nonstop action. In CRISIS MOON, there's interesting action at the very beginning, a long lull in the middle and the training montage, and then a little bit more action at the end of the book. I was so. bored. for about two-thirds of this book. The dialog also came across as very stilted and a little bit amateurish with all the he saids, she saids, they saids throughout a conversation. It was a lot more noticeable, I think, with the audiobook because of the repetition. I just wanted to give the author a thesaurus to change up his word usage a bit.

It didn't help that, as a listener, that you never got a good feel or created much of a connection with the characters. I would say that I felt something for Jim because of his mom and his dog, Apollo, but other than that I really didn't care. You never got much of a sense for Richard, Christine, or the two military guys.

As for the audiobook, it wasn't bad. I thought the narrator, Jack Clancy, did a pretty excellent job. He created different voices for all the characters - he didn't even had a bad voice for a woman! I especially liked that the producers chose to make the voices sound as if they were coming through a communications channel or from a tunnel when the situation called for it. It added another level of quality to the story that I greatly enjoyed.

I received a free copy of this audiobook and am voluntarily leaving a review.

Fun Tech

I enjoyed the science in this one for sure. I don't often read books that are mostly science and less fantasy, but this was fun. I liked that the story was able to create a fast paced story that didn't feel lacking.
You got to know the characters and they seemed fairly solid for the limited time we had to get to know everyone.

Not knowing the science, I have no clue if the science of the ships works, even theoretically, but it definitely is written convincingly, like someone actually put in research and time into making sure that it has some basis in reality and actual rocketry/engines.
The overarching story is... also not what I normally go towards. And I think it was good, but is sad because it encourages world stereotypes and views that I think younger readers might be less inclined to accept since large gov't decisions often do not reflect the views of the people now and so in the future more than likely wouldn't reflect the same standards. And we can only hope that those politics do not persist.

I was given a copy of this book by the author. My review is voluntary and reflects my true feelings and opinions.