Summer's End

By: John Van Stry

Narrated by: André Santana

Sometimes a dark past can haunt you. Other times it just may be the only thing keeping you alive.

Fresh out of college with his Ship Engineer 3rd-Class certificate, Dave Walker’s only thought is to try to find a berth on a corporate ship plying the trade routes between the many habs, orbitals, and moons in the Solar System. The problem for Dave, however, isn't his straight C average; it's that his stepfather, a powerful Earth senator he’s never met, now wants him dead.

Forced to take the first berth he can find, Dave ends up on the Iowa Hill, an old tramp freighter running with a minimal crew and nearing the end of its useful life, plying the routes that the corporations ignore and visiting the kinds of places that the folks on Earth pretend don’t exist.

Between the assassins, the criminals, and the pirates he needs to deal with, Dave is discovering that there are a lot of things out there that he still needs to learn.

But there’s one hard lesson he learned long ago that he’s being forced to remember: how to be ruthless.

John Van Stry is a United States Air Force veteran who worked in robotics and as a flight test engineer and as a quality and test engineer in the medical-devices industry. He is a collector of motorcycles and big cats. A star of the indie publishing world, Summer’s End is his first novel with Baen Books.

©2022 John Van Stry (P)2022 Audible, Inc.

To infinity and beyond

This story was great and had so many interesting elements. The narrator did a semi decent job of doing a Texan accent, otherwise the voice acting was top notch! As I listened to this book, I really found myself immersed into this story. Jan did a great job of making it technical but not so technical to lose the pace of the story. Overall, great character development and action plus a little bit of humor for flavor. Really a great story!

A good old fashioned space adventure

So I just finished Summer's End. I really liked it. Its been a long time since I read straight Sci-fi, and I have to say I have been listening to fantasy so long, a part of me was waiting for a Shifter, or maybe some dwarves to pop up 🤣🤣 but obviously they never did. It was a good ol fashioned space adventure. If you want to tag along as a kid leaves Earth for the first time, and see what growing up hard and fast does to your prospects in space, give it a listen! The narrator was serviceable, his reading was very natural and his performance of the main character is very good. My only criticism is he doesn't have a lot of voices in his stable. A lot of characters sounded the same after a while. Not like say Leland King (narrator of the Valens Legacy) that dude had hundreds of characters by the end, and damn near had a distinct voice fir all of them. All in all I give it an A+

The Mongoose has struck!

In a bit to distant future, politics, power, and personal responsibility collide. The unlikely hero is an ex-thug just trying to do the right thing and keep his head down. He's believable and likeable. A lot of world building in the first book of what will be a great series.

The narration was spot on.

It was great, gimmy the sequel!

Gotta say, after reading almost all of the authors fantasy works I was a little worried but this sci-fi story was a very fun and entertaining story with a few surprises that I didn't figure out ahead of time.

great read

I have read around 20 books bythis author. I find his storytelling compelling and engrossing. I set down with his books and can't put them down till they're finished. This one is no different. It's his first book about space, that I know of, but I hope it's not the last.I can't wait to see if he writes more about these characters.

Great story

Really great story. It took awhile to get acclimated to the narrator. Once you get hooked into the story the attempted "Texas" accent stops being so distracting. I enjoyed this book, and am looking forward to the next book.

Wow, really good

right up front and as you can probably tell from the title I recommend this book to anybody reading this review. it's taking me quite a while to set aside the time to listen to this book. I'm a fan of the author who if you're not aware rights under another pen name similar to this one. it's that other name that I first read stories from before finally checking out what was available under his clean pen name. the narrator is a person that I've never heard of before but I think he did a fantastic job with his performance. back to the book boring some new story shakiness that at least in my experience tends to happened from time to time even with trying and true authors the story was very well written and I am very interested in a sequel. my understanding is that the book didn't do as well as the gentleman author had hoped. the Publishing Company that he was working with is when I'm not familiar with and so the pricing was a little high for the ebook before the audio came out or they came out in the same time but there was some sort of push back as I understand it. in other words less than an ideal launch. I do think it's worse your time and treasure though now that I've listened to it. in short our main character was a ruthless Enforcer for a youth gang on this very dystopic sort of Earth. Earth's Society is broken up into three levels and our main character is a part of the middle working class. his biological mother was a part of the Elite Class and abandoned him when life got too hard slumming it. his recognized mother is a part of the low class who had been thrown out on the street with her son when her husband died. she hooks up with his father acting as one part babysitter and one part selling herself only the relationship sticks. fast forward to current days and we see our main character getting off planet on a Starship. part of it is as Pathfinder for his family to have a new better life and the other part is to escape the Hitman that his biological mother's husband has hired. all throughout the story we have one amazing adventure after another as our main character develops. as you come in towards the ending of the book things are set up very nicely for a sequel though not in a way that makes you curse the ending of this book. so I've got my fingers crossed for a sequel and until then I will simply say Well done to everybody who had a hand in bringing this story to us, the audiobook listeners.

Heinlein of the new generation

I've read quite a bit of the author's fantasy work, and enjoyed that, so gave this a try. This book steps into more traditional science fiction. After getting through half the book or so (and enjoying it), I came to the realization that it felt a lot like Heinlein. Scientific and technological developments play a back seat in this novel, with the modest innovations all feeling reasonably plausible, and if anything a bit underestimating likely technology development. The book is much more focused on character development and plot. Much of the science fiction aspect of the book is in the form of predictions of social development as man spreads through the solar system, again, much like Heinlein, but from the perspective of a new generation. It's a very similar mix of social liberalism and conservatism. I enjoyed the book a lot, and will certainly read any sequels, should they appear.

Slow start

The book started at slow with a lot of world or should I say ship building. I am glad I stuck with it as it got a lot better after the attack. Don’t know if there will be another book but I will get it if there is.

Great story

Not what I expected nor what I was looking for, but was a fun book that I hope either gets a sequal or some spin offs in the same setting.