One Day as a Lion

Back to some military sci-fi now, and it’s a new series from a new author. One of the things I like most about military sci-fi is that most don’t tend to go all in for the flowery prose. We’re here for some fast-paced, action-packed combat against interesting peoples with interesting weapons, and in this respect, One Day as a Lion absolutely delivers.

This is a ground-based military sci-fi series whereas a lot of those I’ve listened to previously have been space-based. Now I like the spaced-based hard sci-fi, but they can get a little bogged down with all the physics and science of a realistic war in the stars. Not so here. We aren’t having to calculate relativistic mass driver shots from across a solar well or deal with the time-lag on light-speed communications. No, this book is about a unit of ground-pounders sent to liberate a world from a separated branch of humanity using big guns and big guts, blowing up anything in their way and trying to keep their skin on in the process.

One Day as a Lion is primarily from the third-person perspective of Technical Chief ‘Pappy’ Gunter, a United Earth Armed Forces commando starting to get a little long in the tooth. We also have smaller sections from Talk-to-His-Spear, the general of said disparate humans (the Regime) who have broken out from their secluded empire to conquer the territory of the Lost Ones, as they call the rest of humanity. Things immediately take a turn for the worse for the UEAF as the Regime and their bizarre alien-based tech beat the crap out of them while they attempt planetfall. This brings me to what may be the book’s best quality: the Regime’s technology. I’ve seen, read, and listened to descriptions of an awful lot of weird alien sci-fi technology, but the tech Hernandez has created in this series is genuinely some of the most original I’ve come across, considering that the users are still human. It’s all organic, with weapons, vehicles, and spaceships loosely based around animal-like designs. You’d think this wouldn’t work, that it would be jarring and gimmicky, but the fact is that it does work, and it’s awesome. The way that Hernandez has thought out and then gone to length to explain how this technology works truly does the book justice. The society of the Regime itself is also brilliant, it being a caste-based society of genetically altered humans who fall into either the worker, warrior, or ruler class. We mainly get to know the warriors in the book (obviously), but the way their civilisation and technology meld so perfectly is wonderful to listen to. However, this does bring me to my first negative; namely a lack of information about the inner workings of the Regime itself. An example: there’s a rebellion within the Regime that plays a major part within the story, and yet I’m not entirely sure why it is they are actually rebelling. It’s a bit of a shame really, considering the level of detail that aspects of the society and technology have been portrayed in, only to leave this key part extremely vague. Even by the end of the book I’m not really sure what the motivations of the rebels are. I know they are awesome fighters and I loved getting to know them, but it’s never really laid out why they are fighting. Or at least not in enough detail to quench my burning need to learn about them after having been told so much in other areas.

There are a good range of characters in the book, both from the UEAF and Regime, with each of the members of Pappy’s team having extremely individual voices. This, however, is taken a little too far in an instance or two, namely Pappy’s cockney comrade. You can tell this character was written by an American. She throws out every single cockney colloquialism you’ve ever hear, often all in the same sentence. Ok, I get it, she’s from the rough end of London. You don’t have to shove every little bit of rhyming-slang and UK-specific insult down my ear every time she opens her mouth. It gets very old very quickly.

The story itself isn’t super deep, lacking any big twists or cavernously profound life lessons. Bad guys over there, we’re over here, let’s go over there and kill the bad guys. Simple, but then it doesn’t need to be much more than that. This book is primarily from the perspective of a grunt just trying to keep himself and his friends alive. He’s not searching for any profound meaning in each pull of the trigger. It’s not that kind of book, and frankly that’s not the kind of book I was after when I decided to pick this one. Is it going to redefine the way you see the world? No. Are you going to have a good time listening to this book? Absolutely, if you’re into this kind of novel. I definitely am.

I always have a benchmark against which to measure the quality of a book when I reach the end. A simple measure that will always give me a decent bearing on what score to give it. Put simply, as soon as I finished Book 1, I immediately went and downloaded Book 2. I enjoyed myself throughout the entire novel and was never bored. Is it one of the best books I’ve ever listened to? Nope, but it’s still a fun listen and one I would highly recommend if you are a fan of the genera.

As for narration, I don’t know if I’ve come across Ryan Kennard Burke before, but he does a decent job. His cockney and Scottish accents could use a little work, but I honestly don’t know a yank who can actually pull those off without sounding a little like a caricature. But what do you expect when most of their experience with those accents comes from Guy Richie films or Groundskeeper Willy? Still, a solid performance.

Personal Score: 3.75 stars

Professional Score: 3.5 stars