Swords and Saddles

By: Jack Campbell

Narrated by: Adam Verner

Swords and Saddles is a must-listen collection of three novellas from New York Times best-selling author Jack Campbell.

The Rift: Answering a distress call from a colonized planet, a combat team finds themselves ambushed. They manage to scrabble their way to a remote research facility in the countryside, joining a group of schoolchildren that have holed up with the researchers - three groups united in fear that their lives will last only as long as they can avoid discovery by the aliens that have come to their planet.

Swords and Saddles: When lightning strikes Captain Ulysses Benton and his US Cavalry Fifth Regiment, they recover to find an ancient structure in the desert that they've never seen before - and writing in a language none of them recognize. It soon becomes clear that wherever it is they are, it isn't 1870s Kansas.

Failure to Obey: When Lieutenant Jen Shen saves the day after a terrorist attack on a space station, she gets a medal, but Ivan Sharpe, a fellow officer and Paul's former master-at-arms, gets a court martial. In a classic court martial scene that rivals the best in American literature, Paul has to work behind the scenes to save Ivan's military career.

©2013 John G. Hemry (P)2016 Tantor

Waiting for the next Paul Sinclair saga.

Love all three stories. Last one was my favorite. There is a lot that can happen on Mars. Need more

Great short stories

The first story took me a little bit to get into, but the second and third stories were fantastic right from the start. The third story was especially intriguing and I found I didn't want it to end.

Failure To Obey

The third and last story in this series is a follow on story for his JAG series. Lots of fun!

Decent stories, bad narration

The three stories were good. For the first two, the narrator was ok. However, that last story was tough to listen to.

The acronym "LCDR" is pronounced "Lieutenant Commander." It isn't read as "L-C-D-R"

Similarly "LTJG" can be read as either "Lieutenant J-G" or "Lieutenant Junior Grade." Under no circumstances is it read as "L-T-J-G."

These two misreadings happened so often, it was hard to listen to the final story.

First 2 stories were fine, last story was hard to listen to

I really enjoyed all 3 stories. The reason why I bought this audio was for the 3rd story, because I am such a big fan of the JAG in Space series. My low rating is not about the stories, but about the narrator. In the “Failure to Obey” story, the narrator is absolutely awful. How do you read a military based story and know nothing about what the proper terminology is???!!!

LCDR is Lieutenant Commander!
LTJG is Lieutenant Junior Grade or Lieutenant JG!

Was there no director or editor during recording to say “Hey Stupid, your saying it wrong!” This isn’t deep stuff. Even someone who has watched a couple Star Trek episodes should know this.

Anyway if you don’t want to be aggravated I would suggest reading the stories yourself instead of listening to his clown.