Scimitar's Glory

By: Dietmar Wehr

Narrated by: Gabriel Vaughan

Human-explored space lies between two alien races that are either openly aggressive or covertly hostile. 7th Fleet discovers that one of those races is moving to attack. In a moment of panic, the commanding admiral orders the fleet to attempt a risky jump through hyperspace. They miss hitting their target star’s gravity well and end up deep in unexplored space with a shockingly long trip home and not nearly enough food to last that long. With war now raging in their home systems, the officers of 7th Fleet must find a way to put aside their egos, ambitions, and fears in order to make it back, and they know that not all of them will.

Scimitar’s Glory is the first book in a new, fast-paced, action-packed military SF series: Swordships Odyssey. The second book, Excalibur's Quest, is also now available.

©2018 Non-Linear Visions Inc. (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

Needs to Show not Tell

This could have been a very interesting book. The challenge I had was that the story focuses on "Telling" everything instead of "Experiencing" the journey. I couldn't really identify with any of the characters. To get to know someone you have to have experiences with them. Understand how they feel and what they think. This story had a lot of technical concepts challenges and facts, but without the connection to the characters, it felt more like reading a technical manual.

If you would like a book with a similar concept, but with fantastic execution, read The Lost Fleet.

Save The Credit

I bought this book on sale, which is the only time you should get it. While I started out liking the book the narration and story flaws, plot holes, and boring nature of the story started to grind on my willingness to complete the book. Firstly, the story is weak, boring, and filled with way too much unnecessary tech exhibitionism. The characters are shallow, uninteresting, and poorly developed. The author focuses way too much time on elements of the story, like the percentages of a successful space jump from point A to point B then he spends on important details like telling the story. A lot of the story is the author's exhibitionism at play telling us just how smart he thinks he is while making the characters of the story come off as emotionless incompatant mentally immature, unorganized, dithering, forgettable people. The overall cadence of the story will put you to sleep. The timing of events is so disjointed as to make this entire book feel as though it was written by an AI. The one thing that drove me absolutely bonkers was the emotional and robotic way the narrator read the story. I honestly started to believe that this story was actually being read by an AI. The voices the narrator uses are quite good and his range of talent is commendable. That being said, the tone and emotionless robotic and lackluster pace of his narration of this book was mentally fatiguing to listen to for more than a few minutes at a time. Overall, an ok book with a story and narration that will challenge your ability to listen with enjoyment.

Pro's - Good potential. Just entertaining enough to recommend for purchase while on sale.
Con's - Robotic and emotionless narration. Boring story elements that waste too much time on the mundane while skipping the important parts.

Performance was awesome, space warfare nonsense

Struggling to finish to the end, space warfare didn't make sense. How they ran out of food and not fuel was confusing.

Main command dropped good commanders for petty reasons. Overall the story felt very rushed

Cheesy dialogues and awkward plot

After the commanding admiral orders a long jump, the fleet misses the target star. The fleet needs a star gravity well to force the ships out of space. I like this idea.

But, once they hit a different star and come out of hyper 900 light years from earth, the commanding admiral "kills" himself. The flag captain orders a face-to-face with all the other ship captains. It is here when the plot becomes awkward. Who should lead the fleet back home? Who has the seniority? The flag flag captain tries to take over but a junior captain points out that someone else has seniority. This senior captain takes command and makes this junior captain his second in case something happens to him. The flag captain kills the senior captain and tries to kill the junior captain. This murder makes the junior captain the commander of the fleet. Should the next senior captain be the one to take command? If the flag captain is second in command after the admiral, should he not already be in command of the fleet?