Qalea Drop

Spiral Wars, Book 7

By: Joel Shepherd

Narrated by: John Lee

The UFS Phoenix embarks on a dangerous quest for the AI Ceephay Queen who rules at the heart of the Reeh Empire. For cover, Phoenix will use the enormous war being launched by the new rulers of the croma, Croma'Dokran, into reeh space. This war is intended in part to evacuate the corbi homeworld of Rando, thus righting a great wrong of croma history by rescuing 200 million corbi from reeh tyranny.

While Lisbeth defies her parren seniors to use drysine and parren firepower in assisting the evacuation, Erik captains Phoenix, accompanied by Styx's four drysine warships, to the world of Eshir, where Styx insists the Ceephay Queen was once located. There, in the ancient, ruined city of Qalea, Trace and Styx must lead an away mission through buried layers of Reeh Empire history to uncover its long-forgotten secrets. Discovering the Ceephay Queen's present location could set them on the road to saving humanity. But Qalea's secrets have been hidden by the reeh for millennia, secrets that could rock their Empire, and they will stop at nothing to keep hidden.

©2020 Joel Shepherd (P)2020 Audible, Inc.

A Wonderful Addition

The Spiral Wars is my favorite Sci-fi series and this book is just as fantastic as the rest of the books in this series. I love the lore and deep history present in all these books, not to mention the intense political scheming on all sides. I eagerly the next installment and hope there are many more to come.

good listen

a bit more of the same but if you've made it this far that's probably OK with you, hopefully the next book move the story along more though

series continues in high end form

This is one of the best series in this genre. Story, chemistry, action, and dialog make it worth multiple listens.

Still fresh and exploring

Loving this series, it still feels fresh, and is developing the characters well. Passages with AI are consistently interesting

The Character Development & Hard Science 💪🔥👏

Never knew Joel's writing until this series, very lucky to have stumbled upon this! Strong writing, character development through the roof, plot lines that cascade, and very plausible future tech that makes the best Science fiction 🙌👏.

I'm all caught up in the series, ugggh 😫 I need the new books to drop!

Excellent as Always

Another great book in the series. Most of the spiral wars books read almost as a casual philosopher's tourist guide to the spiral, this is no exception and no decrying remark. The world building is world class and the characters are excellent and have development and depth rarely maintained over a long series. This book is mainly about the secrets, politics and intrigue of the species we met in the last few books. This keeps you hooked and needing to know more from the first to the last minute of the book.

The reader seems to change some pronunciations towards the end, but it's not extreme and he keeps up his quality of reading throughout the book. Hardly surprising as he is a talented reader, helps enhance a great book/series to an amazing book/series.

Slow start but Home Run ending

Enjoyed the Book, I have really enjoyed the Series just tough to wait a year plus between books.

The authors imaginary universe continues to expand

The author continues to exhibit great imagination. The performance continues to be good. The books could be a lot shorter but the author always adds new characters and settings where he goes into great detail to build the characters. In the end you always want to read the next book to see what happens to the main characters

excellent

an excellent addition to an excellent series deep world building with heavy emphasis on characters and philosophies. Plots mostly revolve around strategy and political intrigues with hidden histories and agendas

Way out on the spiral, kicking ass & taking names

Joel Shepherd's Qalea Drop is the 7th installment in the Spiral Wars series. Phoenix and her crew are still out on the spiral arm in the Chroma / Reeh region. The Croma have decided to rectify their previous treatment of the Corbi and engineer a 'Dunkirk' of Rando to relocate 200M Corbi. The Parren with Lisbeth, peripherally participate, but end up getting involved. Meanwhile, Eric and crew go off in search in Reeh space for the Ceephay queen and find a Ceephay AI, but not the queen, while also learning of Drysine emerging independence. At the same time, Trace has a mission on Qalea which houses multiple alien species, including humans that were captured by the Crim over one thousand years ago and transferred to the Reeh. On Qalea, against a backdrop of competing human and alien interests, Reeh secrets lie hidden that point to critical history of the Reeh empire.

Shepherd continues expand the story arc, while at the same time building an integrated and compelling series of subplots. Within this offering, the machine AI history has become more complicated with evidence of ongoing activity beyond the Deepey nines, as well as emerging clues of diverging interests. There is a tease that Eric and crew still face resistance on the home front despite all their efforts. If nothing else, Eric has upset the balance of Reeh and Croma in this region. In addition to all the big picture activity, there is also plenty of intimate and interpersonal action with Lisbeth's Parren position a bit more tenuous. The Corbi evacuation has several touching tender moments and Trace is facing her personal demons due to her time on Rando that make her more human. Finally, Shepherd manages to portray alien races as truly alien and unique.

John Lee continues his stellar performance with the most complex character distinction employed, including alien and AI characters. Pacing is superb. This is pure ear candy, worthy of an Oscar!