Raven's Sphere

A New Sci-fi Adventure Novel

By: Melissa Koberlein

Narrated by: Amy Deuchler

If she can’t let go of the past, there won’t be a future for anyone.

Eighteen-year-old Raven is a thief with a disturbing past. Her life of pilfering expensive tech vaults on space freighters takes a nosedive when she finds a frightened 12-year-old boy on her newest stolen spaceship. In his possession is a glowing sphere he swears to protect at all costs.

Moved by the kid’s courage, Raven does the one thing she hasn’t done in a long time - she cares...a little. She allows him to stay aboard. What she doesn’t realize is that by doing so, she and the kid have become the most wanted individuals in the galaxy.

From the author of the Ashwater series and Fireflies trilogy, comes this new, dark interstellar adventure.

Fans of The Mandalorian and Firefly will devour this fast-paced novel by Melissa Koberlein.

Buy Raven's Sphere to start this exciting adventure today!

©2019 Melissa Koberlein (P)2020 Melissa Koberlein

Great redemption story!

This book was a blast--the feel is somewhere between Star Wars and Firefly, with grand sweeping space empires and ragtag underdogs. The story centers on Raven, who has some huge issues in her past and a large chip on her shoulder. I loved the character interactions here, especially with Emery. I didn't so much like the love interest, Cole...but, ah well. And there's some seriously evil villains which rounded it all out.

There was a plot twist in the middle that threw me for a while, but I did like the ending! Pretty epic stuff. It's hard to say much more here without giving anything away, but if you like big stories with a lot of action and heart, this will likely be up your alley. I really appreciated the character journey here, too--it feels like that's lacking sometimes in a lot of space opera.

The narration was fantastic--I'd highly recommend the narrator! Overall, a really enjoyable read!

I received a free review copy at my request and happily left this review.

Solid 4.5

This is the first book I have read/listened to by this author. The book ends with a conclusion to the events in this book, but definitely could be open to more. It seems this book is the start of a series, if so, I’d like to listen to the next one. I see there is another book based on the Raven’s Sphere world. I’m curious to listen to it.

Although there was not constant action (which I do not feel is a negative) the book kept me interested with the direction things were going.
I was a bit surprised to learn the main character was only 18 years old. For me, that feels too young for this character.
Raven is sarcastic, clever and self reliant. Although she puts forth a tough attitude, she is guilt ridden and doesn’t really want to be alone. She buries her feelings but when she finds a young boy on a ship she commandeers she feels compelled to protect him. She also really wants to trust Cole, her childhood companion and rival.

This is the first book I have listened to by this narrator ( Amy Deuchler ) and I would gladly listen to another.
She brings personality to each character, has distinct voices for each and reads the action sections well without over-expressing. Raven is a tad sarcastic and she portrays this well also.

There are some tame kissing and touching scenes, no excessive violence, there is some minor swearing.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and voluntarily left this unbiased review.
Please feel free to comment on whether you found my review helpful.

Badass Space adventure

Nothing makes me happier than a kick-ass kick in space being a total boss. Raven is a no nonsense space baddie who uses her tech, brains, and stubborn will to conquer her past. Her character is so relatable and doesn't let her damage from the past stop her. 👏👏👏

Adventures in Space lead to maturity

Our characters are young enough and naive enough that this is YA sci-fi. It is pretty clean with no more than a couple of kisses.

Romping through space looks good in the first chapter or two... then the video game theme hits hard and we must dash about with our heroine to save the galaxy... even the universe.

Our criminals turn out to have a heart of gold (well some of them). And we end up with a superhero too!

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

Very interesting story

My mother taught me if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing. Based on this story, I have lots to say!!! I really enjoyed the twists and turns in the plot. I found myself sad at times, grieving almost with the characters. The ending was quite shocking with Joe and would love to read more from this author.

Fun and action packed!

This is an amazing book. I loved every aspect of it. The adventures, the chemistry between Cole and Raven. The love between Emery and Raven. I am looking forward to the next book.

I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

Not bad, but definitely done before

I received a free review copy of this audio book, at my request, and am voluntarily leaving this unbiased review.

I want to start by saying that this is not a bad book. I want to preface that, because I don't actually have a lot of good to say about it. The issue is this book is fine but doesn't stand out from all the other books just like it.

This book kind of falls in 2 parts. The first half is kind of fast paced and fun. The second part is fairly slow and absolutely not fun. It's not dark, but it looses its spark and drags on.

The book is written first person present tense. This is hard to do well, and not sound like a gimmick meant to create tension. The author falls in the middle in this attempt, in that the plot is so predictable that there is no tension but the pov is only mildly distracting.

The other issue is the predictable plot. Every trope is used from the "Bad girl with no parents, who's actually a diamond in the rough" to the "people around me die" to the "guy I thought was good turned out to be bad (but us secretly good)". It's all very paint by numbers. I kept hoping for something new and different, but I kept being disappointed.

There is also a LOT of cringe worthy sexual themes in this book. The main character sizes up every secondary character and antagonist she meets, and is hit on by every guy in the book, and some of the women too. Worst of all, the "Bad boy" she's in lust with is just plain creepy and a bit of a sexual predator. Of course, in true "don't try this at home" style she, of course, falls in love (or at least) lust with him.

The main character has little depth, but does have a story arc. That's something at least. Her motivations are fairly straightforward and do not have any real complexity to them. Instead of depth and being well rounded, she has mood swings to show us her troubled mind. It fell flat with me as it seemed fairly forced and very little felt natural to the story.

The secondary characters are mostly 1 dimensional. Being a first person pov, a little flatness to not pov characters is to be expected, but in this case, there was no complexity to the characters. They were all what/who they were, with little surprise.

The settings of the book were kind of plain, nothing too exotic. This fit well in the narrative, but it would have been nice to at least see other more exotic places, even if just in a billboard add in a city or something.

The voice narration by Amy Deuchler is OK, but not great. She does an OK job with voice differentiation, has a good range of voices. And while her male voices aren't great, they are good enough to not be distracting. However, she doesn't bring enough emotion to the role and it's hard to make a connection with someone reading a script, rather than someone acting the book.

Ultimately this is the problem with the book. It doesn't DO anything "wrong", it's just there's little here that isn't done better somewhere else. Too many of the plot devices and themes are so standard they are tropes now. And the whole book is predictable and lacks the tension that this should have had. The sexual energy is definitely off and can be cringe worthy at times. This isn't a bad book, there's just nothing new here.

I won't be continuing the series.