Mako

The Mako Saga, Book 1

By: Ian J. Malone

Narrated by: Andrew Wehrlen

It’s just a game...or is it?

On the heels of his divorce, down-and-out history professor Lee Summerston doesn’t have a lot going for him - a nowhere job at a third-rate college with kids who don’t care about anything except how to slide through class. All of that changes, though, when Lee leads a team of old friends to virtual glory as the first-ever group to beat Mako Assault, a revolutionary new game that has emerged from nowhere to take the Internet by storm.

As a reward for their achievement, the group is flown to meet the game’s mysterious designer and assist in developing the follow-on game Mako 2.0. But what they find when they get there is more than they’d expected...much more. Mako’s intent was never to entertain its players. It was to train them.

An epic sci-fi thrill-ride of action, suspense, laughter, and romance, Mako is the story of five ordinary people who will have to rise to the challenge of extraordinary events, driven only by their faith in each other. If they can’t, the game will become very real to more than just themselves - the Earth itself may ultimately be at stake.

©2009 Ian thomas (P)2013 Sharkflight Media, LLC

Good story poor SF

The story is quite well written with good character development and a decent writing style. The voice-acting is excellent. However, the technical side of things seems fairly poorly thought out. Suspension of disbelief is invoked many more times than necessary in this book, in many places seemingly out of laziness. The space battle scenes seem to lack a sense of the actual size of space, and space battles seem more like naval/air battles. For example, a space ship with wings so it can work in atmosphere as well, which seems to go from zooming around the canyons on a moon or the planet's surface back into orbit in a matter of a few seconds, then sweeping graceful arcs through space. While I confess, this is no worse than some of the SF in Star Wars, it feels a little disappointing on this front. Also, as mentioned by others, the book is steals pretty liberally from The Last Starfighter and Star Wars. As a character study, it's good, and it would probably make a decent summer movie, but don't go in expecting anything vaguely like hard SF.

Looking Forward to the Next Book(s)

Mako is an enjoyable book that lays the groundwork for some potentially interesting sequels.

Ian Malone did a very good job at developing his characters and, yes, some of the "science" behind how things operate in space are simplified, this doesn't take away from what he's written.

I enjoyed the journey from being part of a gaming community/family to being a part of an alien society/family. The fact that they're just like us will need to be better explained in future books, but suffice to say it makes the read more accepting.

My one critique was the narrator's awful Scottish accent for Hamish ... seriously? That's why I gave performance a "4".

MAKO - Great story

Where does Mako rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I was happy the way this audio book was created. The characters developed wonderfully and the detail of there backstory made me "know" them. I was so interested in the beginning because it reminded me of some details of my past, and mu friends. I loved this book, and will patiently wait for the next one and more.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Lee - Is the closest character that I would think I would have a similar reaction to in this situation

The Game Is Just the Beginning

I really enjoyed this one. I can see where some reviews bash on this book due to its nautical dialog in space. The author uses phrases and terminology, not to mention physics, that may be accurate for sea and air battle but have no relevance to a space battle. That being said, the usage is consistent throughout the story and makes it easy to understand what is going on in the story. It worked for me and I thought it was a well written story.
Narration was just that... narration. Several different voices and accents made it easy to keep track of everyone but that did not change the fact that this voice was dry and monotone. Acceptable for the story but did not help to draw you into the story.
I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

great listen really draws you in

Would you listen to Mako again? Why?

hell yes great book watching the charters grow into the story makes this a human interest story

Any additional comments?

pls give us the rest of the saga quick im dyeing to find out what happens next hurry up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Review “Mako”

Great book, I enjoyed the story written by Malone, and the presentation was top notch by Wehrlen. I’ll be digging into book two immediately:-)

Easy read

What did you like best about Mako? What did you like least?

Easy to go back to and easy to let go of. For me this book falls under the junkfood category. It is pretty enjoyable while reading it, but it does not last past the point you put it away.

Would you listen to another book narrated by Andrew Wehrlen?

I would. He does a pretty decent job with this book without that much to work with.

Any additional comments?

Buy it and enjoy the listen. Just don't expect to be blown away by fantastic plots, character development and hours of post book processing.

Starts slow, but worth the money. No regrets.

The narrator has weird pauses but once you get used to it, around chapter 4, the story gets fun. Rough start but nice finish. Heart-pounding action and something nice for the ladies too.

I wanted to like this book

I really wanted to like this book, I thought the premise was cool. I listened for the first third or so before I had to stop. The narrator was completely distracting - every sentence has weird pauses and stops, and the accents are horrible stereotypes. The race of aliens is somehow just like humans. 5 people are willing to give up their lives on zero notice and go fight a war in space, using the knowledge they learned from gaming. There's just so much suspension of disbelief. I just can't justify spending the time to finish the book.

Predictable and shallow. Written for young adults?

What disappointed you about Mako?

The premise had potential (even though it was 'The Last Starfighter' reboot), but the story ended up just replaying set pieces of a dozen other books. Don't expect any depth to the story. Ridiculous things take place and the best rationale the author could come up with was "science & stuff happened". The characters were satisfied with the ridiculousness of it all, but I was not.

What was most disappointing about Ian J. Malone’s story?

About halfway through the book I found myself checking (hoping) if it was close to being done. If you like mildly entertaining stories, with little explanation of events or circumstances, and no attempt to make things even slightly plausible, you might enjoy it. For me the incongruities built up to the point where I could barely finish the book.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

Performance was average. Nothing special, but not bad either.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Mako?

The beginning was ok, but as soon as the author started attempting to paint a view of the future, the silly explanations made the story fall apart for me. A space fighter was described as rolling down the tarmac... out of another space craft. Personally, I'm not sure nasa would approve of using tarmac as a building material within a spacecraft. An alien race that evolved to be nearly 100% genetically identical to humans was interesting... who all have western names and everything from every day life we have (newspapers, bacon, beer, etc.) but they were fascinated by our music. The author made no attempt to create another culture, etc. Humans just got stamped all over the universe conveniently. I guess it would save on costume costs for the tv movie version.

Any additional comments?

This could be a series created for the early sci-fi channel. It would of been cancelled after 4 episodes however. Could also work as a cartoon mini-series.