Cry Pilot

Cry Pilot, Book 1

By: Joel Dane

Narrated by: David Shih

A devastated Earth. Rogue bio-weapons. And a recruit with secrets. In this explosive new military science fiction novel, a tight-knit infantry squad is thrown into battle against a mysterious enemy that appears without warning and strikes without mercy.

There's only one way for a man with Maseo Kaytu's secrets to join the military: by volunteering for a suicide mission as a "cry pilot". He cheats the system to survive, but you can't fake basic training. Assigned to a squad of misfits, Kaytu learns how to fight, how to obey, and how to trust. Yet the more he bonds with his fellow recruits, the more he risks exposure of his criminal past.

Keeping his secret is about to become the least of his problems. Kaytu discovers that his platoon is being deployed against a new kind of rogue bio-weapon. One that has torn apart every military force it's ever faced....

©2019 Joel Dane (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"I picked it up, I started reading. I kept reading. This is that kind of book, intense, involving, with intriguing world development. Recommended. Joel Dane is a writer to watch." (C.J. Cherryh, author of the Foreigner series)

"Joel Dane's Cry Pilot is a hyperkinetic and unflinching battle narrative that never loses sight of the truth of being a soldier: The squad comes before all else. Told with momentum and immediacy, Cry Pilot is authentic, exciting, and excellent." (Marko Kloos, author of Terms of Enlistment)

"In Cry Pilot, Joel Dane has imagined a fascinating high-tech future Earth where ecological collapse and runaway evolution have conspired to create enemies no army has ever encountered before. Told through the eyes of a young soldier seeking to escape a grim past, the action-packed plot holds tight to a human dimension." (Linda Nagata, author of The Red Trilogy)

Slow start but worth it

Reminded me of Starship Trooper in a way, but very entertaining. It was a slow start but worth the wait as it picked up and became more action packed and the characters more developed.

Really enjoyed this book

Bought on a whim and LOVED the story and the band of brothers / aliens squad vibe sci-fi done right

excellent book!

Detailed Gibsonian prose and rich world building. First person narrative immerses you in conflict and situations. Heinlein style squad dynamics. With well-drawn teammates. Some excellent trope characters freshly realized. Awesome chaste romance with rooting interest and mature resolution. A little bit Anime. A little bit Halo. I'm looking forward to following the story in the other books. Readers performance was excellent. Confirmed!

A fresh take on military sci-fi

Both the narrator and the writing was great, avoids over used tropes in the genre. The beginning didn't initially grab me, but I was quickly sucked in after that

A bit tough to get into but good overall

I had trouble getting into the story with all the made-up terms. At times it felt like the author was doing it just to fill space (“that meant she agreed”) rather than inventing terms to encapsulate an idea of something that could exist in the future, replete with its own terminology.

The other thing that made it hard to track is the ridiculous names for the characters. And there were too many for me to really care about. Nonetheless, I liked the main character and the main supporting ones.

If I had been editing the book, I’d have told the author to collapse the first 2/3 into 1/3 and advance the story more before the end. It ends on a bit of an unsatisfying note, felt a bit like Starship Troopers ending (“And they’ll win!”) without actually giving us the conclusion.

I guess I’ll read the next book—it’s still better than most TV 😝

Amazing. Unlike anything I've read before.

I never review but this was amazing. Creative. Original. Tight writing well performed. get it.

Feels like it was written by a teenager

Amazingly, this book gets close tto 5 stars on Goodreads, evidence that you can't trust reviews written there.

Far too many 'novel concepts' shoveled into everything, no room left for prose. The author does not dwell on details of human interaction or character development. The vocabulary is obfuscated by made-up things, or limited in scope. He has a plot, a hero, and a lot of random stuff. Contrast this with low-bar simplistic dialogue, and what you get is a kind of manic shoveling of concepts into a universe occupied by dimwits.

The narration was mediocre, poor elocution and at points unintelligible.

Could not finish.