Lt. Reilly - Bundle: 5 Book Series by Matthew O. DuncanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Performance: *****
Story: ****
The narration for the Lt Reilly PoV (books 1, 2, 3 & 5) was about as good as I have ever encountered without a cast, with a near perfect combination of timber, tone and accent to make each character distinct. The Major Mitchell PoV (book 4) changes narrators and that performance was almost sub par for me. Weighing in at nearly 37 hours for all five(5) books, this was still a bargain. The high quality of the performance and story just make it more so.
The world building here was solid for a sci-fi universe. There were a few tech issues that I could easily gloss over, but the overall feel of this military adventure was totally relatable and even a tad nostalgic for me (full disclosure - I was trained as a naval engineer … so it hit all of the small details just right). Most of the issues were in the small descriptive text (data dumps) that expounded on various tech and situations for context … fortunately they were brief enough that they didn’t take you out of the story and most seemed quite reasonable. The setting mostly revolves around the human worlds (so there are brief interactions with aliens) that could almost be dystopian with the various crime syndicates playing the bad guys (or enabling the bad guys). Intersystem space travel uses quantum tech (because warp tech is so last year) and sentient AI(s) that have been reigned in a bit to prevent them from taking over the world (so either limited and/or compartmentalized). Weapon systems are either lasers or missiles (missing PDS and rail guns) with energy shields and light armor. All just enough to make it real without diving down into the weeds.
Reilly is the PC and is a seasoned space engineer and all around good guy recruited into being a military investigator (giving us the the overall theme of the series). Mitchell is primarily a supporting character (serving mostly as a foil and potential love interest with a twist) and doesn’t do quite as well for me when taking point in book 4 (by far the weakest of the series). Kayla is the primary love interest and only takes the stage to provide a human context to the PC. With all that in mind, each story can actually stand on its own with new secrets and interesting conspiracies that are all satisfactorily resolved at the end (and since I am a sucker for happy endings … you get a +1 here). The humor and byplay between characters was easy, fun mostly believable (if a bit pollyannish).
1. Lt. Reilly 2321
2. Lt. Reilly and the Backbird Offensive
3. Lt. Reilly and the Phantom Raptor
4. Major Mitchell and the Carplex Conspiracy
5. Lt. Reilly and the Tansky Gambit
I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
#LtReilly #FreeAudiobookCodes #KindleUnlimited
No comments:
Post a Comment