Legionnaire + Galactic Outlaw

These books were good. And I mean, really, REALLY good. The two come as a single package on audible, and initially when you get to Book 2, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of relevance to Book 1 other than that the two stories are set within the same universe. However, that doesn’t remain the case by the end. They are very much connected and that’s all I should say on the matter to avoid spoilers.

So, Book 1 is a first-person perspective rock’em sock’em gun-fest about a company of power-armoured legionaries stuck on a hostile world, cut off and being cut down by hordes of insurgents. It’s a great story and is non-stop, really hammering home the desperation that the soldiers find themselves in. Book 2 takes a somewhat more sedate angle as a third-person perspective story following a couple of bounty-hunters and a young girl seeking vengeance for her murdered father. Book 2 gives us a proper look at the universe within which Book 1 is set, and boy is it a good one. Plenty of interesting alien species, otherworldly locations, and a planet-hopping adventure that really gets the blood pumping.

I have an example of the quality of the writing that I would like to share. I have a personal hatred that has a nasty habit of rearing its head a lot in the fiction I ingest and has on more than one occasion led me to completely stopping a book in what I have been told was a brilliant series. That personal hatred is innocent people being blamed for things by incompetent but powerful people who actually caused the issue. I don’t know why, but it stabs me right in the guts and sets aflame my annoyingly indelible sense of right and wrong. Book 1 has such a moment early on that was so bad that I toyed with the idea of stopping the book. However, the reason that continued plugging away through my personal inability to deal with such a fairly common trope in fiction was because the preceding opening scenes were some of the best military-sci-fi I’ve ever come across. Just action, action, action, interspaced with awesomeness. This book made me genuinely excited to keep listening whilst also dreading what was to come, a perfect contrast that resulted in one of the most engrossing stories I’ve come across in a very long time.

Book 2 switches completely, morphing from regimented legion grunts desperate to survive a hostile world to a planet-hopping adventure primarily following two separate bounty hunters; the first being a witty, charming, and somewhat amoral rogue just in it for the cash while the other is a grizzled old veteran whose story is so legendary that half of the galaxy thinks he’s a myth. These two stories bounced off each other perfectly, one being much more upbeat while the other dealt with far deeper content and darker inferences of the characters and universe in general. Between them they found a perfect balance, and I couldn’t stop listening. And just when I get to the end, perfectly contented with believing that each book in this series is more likely to be an independent story, it comes swooping in and blasts all those notions out of the airlock by weaving a hundred disparate aspects together into what looks to be a single, galactic-scale epic. I was blown away, and it is damned rare for that to happen to my jaded bones at this point.

The two books form a perfect cocktail of entertainment. I can’t think of a single aspect that wasn’t done well. Flawless.

As for narration, I am completely bias here as R.C Bray also voices Expeditionary Force, which is one of my favourite sci-fi series. Here he brings his huge range of vocal talents to a wide span of characters (many non-human) and gives each the performance that the quality of the writing deserves. Awesome.

Personal Score: 5.0 stars

Professional Score: 5.0 stars

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