Descent

The Palladium Wars, Book 4

By: Marko Kloos

Narrated by: Seth Podowitz

A nationalist uprising triggers an interstellar wrest for control in an epic novel of embattled worlds by the author of Citadel and the Frontlines series.

POW Aden Jansen has lost a decade of his life to both the war and internment when he’s recruited by the Alliance. He’s to return to Gretia as an undercover Blackguard operative and destroy Odin’s Wolves—an insurgency that’s setting his home world afire. The mission comes with a full pardon and a chance to reclaim his identity. It also means rejoining his friends and family in space. That’s motive enough. If he can succeed—and survive.

Dunstan Park is on piracy patrol to track down the spaceborne arm of the uprising. Meanwhile, the rebels’ insidious terrorist cells are targets for battle-hardened insurgent hunter Idina Chaudhary and her Palladian commandos. As for Aden’s sister, Solveig, she’s put herself in the line of fire before, but discovering who’s bankrolling Odin’s Wolves is as dangerous as it is personal.

As Aden works his way back into the confidence of his comrades, the stealth campaign to sow discontent descends into chaos. At risk: Aden’s legacy, and the very stability of a galaxy struggling for peace against all odds.

©2024 Marko Kloos (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Descent is an action packed science fiction adventure that is a 'must' for the growing legions of Marko Kloos fans. A fun read from cover to cover…” —Midwest Book Review

Series suffers from different narrators for each book

This series is suffering from each book having a different narrator. The narrator for this book sounds like Wil Wheaton with a sinus infection and apathetic view on life.

The book also felt short, with an abrupt non ending.

Short story

As others have mentioned I was surprised when the epilogue started. The book is very short and the story just feels like the start of an idea that just ends after getting the base setup. Took awhile to get use to a new narrator, but after a bit he was great.

BestBook of the series

All of these books are great! This book stands out as the best but you really need to read the books in series to fully understand them. The characters are well developed and the plot deepens as you read. Everything one could ask for in a great series. I can not wait for the next book!

There's a problem with the books.

There's a huge problem with this series, and it's that the books are way to short so you basically take a short hit and then its back to waiting.
Other than that they are basically perfect.

SKIP THIS ONE (ʘ╭ ͟ʖ╮ʘ)

The majority of Book 4 is 'remembering', retellings from previous book(s). And scarcely moves the story along. If you read the first three, you can skip this one and not miss whatever story, if any, is being told. A good guess: book-5 retells anything you might miss in book-4.

The story is good but the performance is meh

With all the books in the series the writer has done a great job with the sciency aspect of space travel. However, the thing that is really bringing down this series for me is the performance of the narration. Every book has been a different narrator. The narrator for this book Seth Podowitz seemed to switch the accents around for different characters which made listening to the book a bit confusing for a while.

Another Great Palladium War Novel

Enjoyed the further development of the main characters. Kloos builds detailed and believable worlds spread across a star system. Can’t wait for the next novel in the series.

Getting REALLY Tired of the Changing Narrators & Short Book Lengths with Stupid Cliffhangers

Enough already with hiring a new narrator with every book in this series! It’s too jarring, and I likely won’t buy the next one.

Speaking of “next one”, I’m sick of these relatively-short books that are a serialized story, and aren’t long enough to be worth the cost (yet we have to pay the same full credit, regardless of the short length).

Might be moving on to another author if the next book in the series is equally short and has yet another different narrator.

4th Book, 4th Narrator?

First, the storyline is great! The author is top notch and the story is engaging.

I just binged the previous three books before listening to this one. I'm extremely disappointed with the narration. At least the previous three pronounced everything similarly, but I have to ask, "did this one even listen to any of the previous books?!?"

The pronunciation of the main characters last name is so different as to be unrecognizable! There are other inconsistencies with pronunciation also. The breaks in some places are more than obvious, with complete sound differences between sentences in some places, almost like it's a whole different narrator, whomever was in charge of production quality control failed miserably.

I was still able to enjoy the story, but pick a narrator and stick with them please. I can't wait for book 5!

good book but to short

it's a good book but it feels like the boom ended at a weird point. not a single thing feels resolved or to a stopping point. Thus feels more like the deadline ran out and what had been writen was published, or a single book was split in half.