Space Hunter War: The Complete Series

A Military Sci-Fi Series Bundle

By: Rick Partlow, Pacey Holden

Narrated by: Ryan Kennard Burke

Get the Space Hunter War Complete Series Box Set, featuring all six books in the series. Explosive military sci fi action from a pair of bestsellers.

Jack Bennet returns from the war to find the life he left behind has moved on without him. The only option he has to make ends meet lies in a military surplus junkyard starship. What’s a former Combat Search and Rescue soldier to do?

Fix up the ship, hire the cheapest pilot—a notorious drunk—and take the first contract that comes up: collect a bounty on one of the most ruthless killers in the Pirate Worlds, a place crawling with thieves, cutthroats and con artists whose primary language is violence. Jack must abandon his nice guy persona, or exploit it, if he is to survive.

What could possibly go wrong?

Experience this special edition omnibus of an explosive Military Sci-Fi Series from bestseller Rick Partlow, author of Drop Trooper, and debut author Pacey Holden.

©2024 Aethon Books (P)2024 Aethon Audio

Engaging

Excellent story. Being a vet myself, I found it to be relatable to me. Keep up the good work. Bravo Zulu!

Worth the listen.

This was a great listen. The story line held up through the entire series and the character development was excellent.

The only drawback was the authors tendency to go off on an ethical and moral soap box from time to time.

A saga that will surprise you

Full disclosure: Review copy courtesy of Aethon

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical of this series at first. I found the name "Space Hunter War" to be a bit cheesy in the 80s/90s sci fi vein. But the series is surprisingly deep, mature, and yes, action-packed. Let's break it down.

Plot: The saga follows the adventures of Jack, a former Search and Rescue officer who is down on his luck at the end of a major inter-species war, and becomes a bounty hunter (hence the name "hunter" in the series). From there (avoiding spoilers) he's roped into progressively more dangerous missions on behalf of a government that's seems unable to cope with the dangers of a post-war society. Events progress through a mix of galaxy-spanning events and VERY unwise/reckless/blindly panicked decisions on Jack's part. While the amount of trouble Jack gets into (and out of) can stretch the borders of disbelief, it still feels logical and compelling, especially as the stakes escalate.

Characters: There are a few major players here and, while I'll be sticking to Jack for the most part in this review, I will say that all of the major characters have depth and no small amount of unhealthy baggage that makes working with each other quite entertaining to watch in a demolition-derby way. Jack is a war vet lots of issues, but that doesn't stop him from kicking all sorts of butt when necessary. He is a little judgmental and it takes him a while to become understanding of his friends' own issues, but he gets there in the end.

My only complaint is that the majority of the villains in the series are pretty one-note. Fanatics, greedy barons, low-life street thugs, etc.

Action: Can't have a military sci-fi without fighting, and ho boy is there a lot of it. Jack is by no means invincible, and he gets his fair share of beatings (more than once a book), but a convenient auto-doc technology is always there to patch him up. It's not necessarily a deus ex machina, since he WAS a SAR officer and it makes sense for that technology to develop within the setting. Plus, it allows the author to set up some truly heart-pounding fights and keep our hero alive for the next one.

Performance: Ryan Kennard Burke is a great performer. He gives Jack the right mix of everyman relatability and lethal bounter hunter gravitas without it coming off as cheesy, and puts enough differences into side character voices so you can easily identify them as their own people with their own lives, hopes, and dreams. Solid!

TLDR: Great series if you're into military sci fi with a lot of emotional maturity.

Great action sequences.

I think the author may have gotten mixed up some of the characters from drop trooper and space hunter. It seemed like a lot of the details like the inheritance being taken by his parents and a girlfriend named Anna were very similar

Solid story and great narration

A solid and compelling story that touches on the difficulties of veterans reintegrating into society after returning from war. Decent world building and character building. A little cliché in places mostly involving copious amounts of plot armor for the main character,but a solid story none the less.

Excellent story line from the Drop Troopers Universe

Different characters and story, still as enjoyable to listen as Drop Trooper was and is.

Engaging

Very well written not overly unbelievable despite... I don't want to give spoilers so I will leave it at that definitely worth the listen.

Beta reader and editor required, but not found

It's really not a bad story, but there are so many minor issues with the details that they detract from the story. If you are going to write science fiction you need to have an engineer or a physicist read your work. Because if you say impossible things then you are really going to kick your readers out of the suspension of disbelief.

Examples? Their ship is big enough only for a small crew. It's not the size of a small town, So no bigger than a few hundred feet and a few hundred tons. But let's pretend it is 1,000 tons instead, which would bring it to the size of a WWII Flower Class corvette. He says it fires tungsten slugs the size of a ground car. If their ground car is the size of a Fiat 500 that would mean around a couple of hundred tons of tungsten per shot. Apparently the author doesn't realize tungsten is very dense. If you could fire that at a speed that makes sense for space combat then the ship would be recoiling at about 1/5th of the velocity of the round. So the crew would have a delta V one fifth that of the shot. They'd be atomized. But then so would the ship.

These sorts of silly things occur often. The most recent I read tonight was that he found a horse drawn cart with wheels about as tall as him, and loaded with metal blades for the harvesting equipment, and then he kicked two spokes out of the wheels. Yeah, not happening. I've seen how those wheels are built and how strong and resilient the spokes are. On a well made wooden wheel that size the pin parts at the end of the spoke are more than an inch diameter hardwood. No, you can't kick the spokes out. It's tough to kick them out of a bike wheel.

Later he's leading the horse and sets it free, without removing its tack I noticed, no horse friendly person would do that. Then later again he's still with the horse? WTF dude, it left miles back and legged it away from you.

And then there's the iced tea, but why call it a drink when you could call it a "fragrant tasty home made brew". Dude! Get an editor. And nobody wants to hear your booze reviews. Yes, you like booze. But booze reviews don't belong in stories, it's booze, not a fragrant amber nectar with overtones of grape and cherry and a smokey aftertaste. Booze snobs are worse than wine snobs.

Can I survive the rest? I don't know yet.

Great Series

Good storyline, characters, and reader. Some of it is kinda unrealistic (duh) but very entertaining.

Great series!

Unlike a lot of people in the comments, I found the ending to be quite satisfying. Long listen for one credit, and I'm a happy camper. Partlow always nails it.