The Girl from the Stars Series Complete Boxed Set: Books 1-5

By: Cheree Alsop

Narrated by: Michele Carpenter

This is the complete audiobook boxed set for the Girl from the Stars series. The blurb for the first book is below. All books are recorded in succession, and this is a complete set with the entire story.

Book 1--Liora Day, half-human, half-mess-with-her-and-you’ll-die Damaclan, had been thrown onto a rough path at a very early age. But when she is broken out of a cage by Devren, the young captain of the SS Kratos, she is shown that perhaps humanity does have a heart. When the Kratos is set on a mission to rescue fallen surveyors from the Revolutionaries, Liora is given the choice to follow her Damaclan instincts, or trust Devren’s dark eyes and captivating smile that promise an adventure unlike any she has ever experienced.

©2022 Cheree L Alsop (P)2022 Cheree L Alsop

Travel the Stars

As an avid fan of YA fiction, this series had everything I could ever want from a story! The author has created worlds and characters that have your imagination taking flight. There is fighting and love. Heart ache and victory! A beautiful strong heroine who can save herself without a man!! It is definitely a Star Trek for this generation!
The best part of this story is the narrator! Michelle beings each and every world and character to life. You often forget that you are only listening to one person! The unique voices she gives to each character has you feeling as if you were listening to a whole cast of people!
This series is definitely worth your time! Take a trip through the stars!

Framework light, execution poor

It’s not the worst I’ve listened to, I actually finished listening. I found the plot devises trite and the performance wooden.
The story premise attracted me yet the execution is fraught with weaknesses in notable plot drivers and far too little ‘showing’ of scenes and situations.
This got worse through the series. Overall I feel like this is a 1st draft that has not had the notes from the editor applied. One particular Bomb stands out as an example where it’s very existence made no contextual sense yet is a major crux to the later storyline.
More work is needed on story craft.
As to the performance - the attempted voices were horribly distracting for the secondary characters from the attempted aristocratic voice of the brother to the screech of one of the others, then the horrible attempt at an Irish lilt. Just NO!

How this got sold and even supported to become an audio book series is a motivation to many writers - you can do it - even this stuff got published on Audible, you can do better yourself.

Enjoyable

I found book 4 a little far fetched, but other than that it was an enjoyable experience.

The natural flow of the story.

I enjoyed the way the story started. I liked the way the story was told. And I liked the way the stories had a natural flow to it to the end.

Awful romance

This appeared to be written in a formula that I really like, full of sci-fi action, adventure, and a slow burning romance. It’s true that it is full of action and adventure but the romance was horrible. I plan to send this audible book to my archive folder and never read anything else from this author. The fact that each book ended in a cliffhanger was just a gimmick to keep readers purchasing the books. Fortunately that doesn’t apply with a box set. But it did get irritating when scenes kept being repeated in order to catch the reader up. Ms. Carpenter did an excellent job of narration providing different voices for all the characters.

A Confusing Mix of Story Elements & Wording

I listened to the entire first book of this collection. First, I found it strange that the author re-wrote the last chapter of book 1 as the first chapter in book 2. When I say re-wrote, they actually added more things and effectively ret-conned the last chapter of book 1.

Beyond that minor strangeness, I found myself lost for most of the first book. Some of the most confusing items were:

The author uses the term "Micro-cosmos" but then says there are Galaxies inside the Micro-cosmos. Then later she reference the Milky Way Galaxy as if it's a small thing with only our solar system in it and not billion of stars and planets. I'm no astronomer, but "micro-cosmos" is not a term I've ever heard with referring to solar systems, galaxies, or the universe as a whole.

The main character is "half Demaclin" which on the surface seems fine, but as the story goes along it seems to mean that Liora is also incredibly gifted in languages, fire-arms, medical techniques, knives, fighting, and oh right, she's telepathic. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a heroic character, but most of Liora's achievements seem to come at the expense of every character around her being a complete and total dufuss.

I have no idea how the crew of the Kraytos has survived without Liora, none of them seem to be able to do more than paint walls or style hair (I wish I was making that up) without at least one or two generic crew members dying. The new captain of the ship and his best friend and ships doctor runs SOOOO hot and cold on his attitude towards Liora that I had to back-track to see if I had mixed up two characters.

I think the plot of the story is decent, but the delivery is ham-handed at the best of times. People/crew members die so often and so stupidly you get to a point of not caring. Liora's backstory make no sense, especially as the you approach the end of the first book.

There are some amazing epic space sagas out there, I'm very sad this isn't one of them.