Taken to the Stars

By: J.N. Chaney, Rick Partlow

Narrated by: John Pirhalla

Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Abducted by aliens. Frozen for decades.

Charlie Travers figures his life can’t get much worse. He lives over a pizza restaurant, he’s lost his girlfriend, and has no prospects for a career.

Then, he’s abducted by an alien robot and taken across the galaxy. When he wakes up, he finds himself stranded thousands of light-years away and about to be killed by space pirates.

Charlie’s only hope of getting through this is learning to work with his fellow abductees: a green-skinned warrior woman, a feathered con man who is just as likely to steal their starship as he is to save them, and a cyborg insectoid pilot who could rip a man apart with ease—if he wasn’t a strict pacifist.

To make matters worse, they were abducted for a reason—one that aims to change the course of the galaxy forever.

©2023 Variant Publications (P)2023 Variant Publications

Lot’s of adventure

What a great start to a series. Lot’s of adventure, action and great characters. Can’t wait to get into the next one.

Super good!

I like this book, the beginning is I thought pretty inventive twist on the Sloan abduction theme so it did not get trite at all

Not bad.

It was an okay start. A bit lightweight but still a good story. I hope the next one is a bit longer.

This book is for middle schoolers

I normally love Chaney and Partlow novels. I couldn’t finish this one and quit with two hours remaining. Very juvenile story.

good read

I found this book by accident, its has a good flow in the story and its not predictable...sofar lol

I’m gonna enjoy this series!

I’m a big fan of these authors but I wasn’t sure what to expect with a new series. It did not disappoint.
It started a bit slow , but once the characters started to develop I really enjoyed it.
Plenty of action and humor and done really interesting characters. Loved the story itself snd can’t wait to see what’s gonna to happen next!

It's Okay but First Person POV pitfalls hurt it

For the most part, this story is “OK,” but it suffers from the pitfalls of First person POV story telling when authors spend too much time in a MC’s head. First person POV also damages a story when the story would be far better told from Third person with multiple POVs to get a better feeling of the world in which the story is told in. So, in my opinion, that’s the biggest problem with this story.

MC pontificates on things entirely too much creating additional, unnecessary narratives and commentaries on subjects. Often, MC’s mind is drifting off about things unrelated to the situation simply for the author to explain some metaphor MC is making regarding a situation, an action taken, or it could really be anything, a facial expression, a description of a creature, etc. Sometimes this breaks the flow of the story’s action sequence, a scene, etc.

Other than that, I don’t think it was a great idea to make MC the age that he was in the book, which is roughly 25ish. He’s also right out of college and an ROTC graduate. Also, the authors wanted to make him not necessarily a loser, but a character who hadn’t achieved all of his goals to the letter. Active-duty Army rejected him for infantry officer school, and he settled for second best, Army National Guard Field Artillery. I felt this created a contradiction later when the authors used plot armor to force the MC to make nigh-perfect decision in combat situations. I get it, it’s a space opera action adventure and MC must survive for the story to continue. My criticism is that his characterization could’ve been a bit more believable and relevant to what the authors wanted MC to achieve later in the story. Too often he’s written like an awkward teenager at times, especially when dealing with the only alien female in the cast, yet at the same time he’s suddenly quasi-Rambo + quasi-Sun Zu + quasi-choose-your-favorite-philosopher.

Beyond those complaints, the story has entertaining parts. Whenever the action was the focus and MC and crew were fighting against the baddies, I was drawn in. Whenever the authors were spending time with MC’s introspections, his constant questions about everything in space, even if some of the answers were self-explanatory, or could be deduce from other portions of a conversation, etc. that’s when I felt the story was a slog.

John Pirhalla does a decent job at narration. I prefer dual narration with a female narrating the female characters, but in this case, there was primarily one female character in the cast. Either way, Pirhalla did good with what he had to work with. I can’t say I wouldn’t recommend the story or would recommend the story. It really depends on how far your mileage may vary. If you get annoyed by too much introspection, a juvenile minded MC (who sometimes have sparks of severe maturity when it was convenient for the story) etc., then this might not be for you. If you’re easily entertained and can be less critical, this might be for you.

Well thought-out story line!

Such a refreshing take on this type of sci-fi time travel story! Not what I expected, in a really good way!

Just ok

Human gets picked up and ends up in space. Wakes up after hyper sleep. Book explains how MC can understand other aliens but not how he’s breathing their atmosphere. Also not why most aliens are sorta all kinda humanoid, although MC does wonder about it himself. MC is not overwhelmingly interesting, and other aliens are more so. Will not continue the series tho as it seems a little immature in the writing.

I enjoyed listening.

Good story, well thought out characters, and the plot was a little weak, but I did enjoy it.