Shadow World

StarBridge, Book 3

By: A. C. Crispin, Jannean Elliott

Narrated by: Romy Nordlinger

What price would a species pay to extend their lifespan?

The golden-eyed Elspind live brief but fulfilling lives. Gaining membership into the Cooperative League of Systems could bring many benefits…including a drug that would greatly extend their lives, but some are opposed to such infringement - violently opposed. Can a soon-to-be StarBridge interrelator on the verge of dropping out unite the people of Elseemar? Come along with Mark, Cara, and Eerin on an adventure filled with danger where a single misstep could mean disaster.

©1991, 2011 A.C. Crispin, Jannean Elliott (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Great story, great storytelling

Have you listened to any of Romy Nordlinger’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I liked the narrators voice and the way she told the story, she made the characters believable. It's very moving and I found myself really caring about them.

Any additional comments?

I'm a sci-fi fan and I just tried this one out of the blue - I'm really glad I did. There's a lot of substance to the intrigues and what happens to the characters, who are very grounded - they seem to really belong in these alien worlds.

So enjoyable

I'm recovering from kidney surgery and this series has kept me entertained, my mind off of things, and happy. A great story, great narration, and heartedly recommended.

RJKaral

Good but not excellent. Many sub plots at times hard to follow. Hope the story continues.

MIXED EMOTIONS😕

The story made some very good points about dealing with grief and self doubt; about the fact that it is unwise to make assumptions about a whole group based on the actions of individuals, and about how you can learn from the customs and traditions of others, no matter how differently they may look or act from your "norm"
There were three things that I found really annoying. The first was that in a series about a future time when sentient beings that could look like anything from a wasp, to a serpent, to bird-like creatures, to mammals including humans, and where there was a school to train species from different worlds to interrelate, get along and learn from each other, the author found it necessary to point out every person of color ( A black man from the back said... He saw her dark legs sticking out from under... etc.). It was as if, in the old Star Trek series, someone would walk onto the bridge and ask of Uhura,
"Who's the black woman?" or, "Did you know Warf is black?" I saw the first TV series in black and white (no pun intended) and never noticed races, which was the whole point. In a time of having to deal with so many different intelligent species, humanity had grown way beyond caring about something as trivial as the color of one's skin. Apparently our author thinks it's still an important distinction to make.
Also, the author annoyingly kept referring to Cara as "The Journalist" as if that was a kind of species.
The middle trek in the book was just boringly long.
All of these problems could have been fixed by a good copy editor, if the author had had one.

Finally, Romy Nordlinger has a nice voice and would probably do well with other material, but in this case it has been grating throughout the series.
She constantly stresses the wrong words in a sentence, especially Elspind pronouns, mispronounces others, and doesn't do different character's voices well at all. Our hero and heroine sound like 12-year -olds.
The story was good enough to stick with it, but it would have been better with another narrater.

This series is inconsistent.

In books 1, 2 , 3 the characters were new in each book which was less enjoyable. The overall universe was the same, but I liked some of the characters and wanted to continue with them in the next book but that didn't happen. i didn't like most of the new characters especially in book 3. I don't think I'm going to continue on with this series even though its free.

All is forgiveness love, always

Well this is the 3rd book with the same basic ending, bad people did bad things, people died/were murdered but the antagonists thought they had a valid reason and in the end whatever they did is forgiven after the humans learn to love and embrace the alien culture.