Is This Written By Roddenberry's Kid?

Ken Lozito continues his "Space Drama": following a human crew that includes conflicting personalities, duplicitous "bad-guy" shipmates with their own hidden agendas, and romantic entanglements - but drops the crew of the 'Athena' - abducted through an inadvertantly activated wormhole - in the middle of an interstellar war between an array of Alien Species. This installment of Lozito's 'Ascension' series finds a character given psychic powers, an alien AI & pair of alien warriors added to the ship's crew, and an obvious "StarTrek Away Team" event incorporated when one-time computer geek 'Zack Quick' has to prove himself in a combat challenge on a farflung planet.
Beyond adding the unmistakably divergent plot elements, Lozito also takes his characters in unforeseen directions (converting cocky pilot/now ship's commander 'Kaylan Farrow' into a stereotypical overly-emotional "hormonal" female, for example). The shift in storytelling between Book One (Television-quality SciFi space drama) & Book Two ('StarTrek: Voyager' clone) is striking.

Fortunately, reader Jeff Hayes is impressive in this recording. He continues to overenunciate (sentences finishing on a consonant are closed with a James Hetfield-esque "-Ah"), and many characters are cartoonish - but Hayes exhibits character interpretations so distinctive that this audiobook often sounds like a full-cast performance. Podium Audio engineers could have done a better job softening the narrator's natural sibilance, but overall this is a quality listen.

To be honest, the 'Ascension' series characters and plot evolution introduced in the first book never grabbed me. After listening to this installment, I haven't changed my mind. I won't be continuing with the serial.. free or not..
You're not *crazy* to do so, mind you - the writing isn't terrible in this well-performed 5.5/10-star offering - but if they ask you for a Credit, there are muuuuuuch better options available than this evolving poor-man's Star Trek.

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Annoying how they portray the female lead

You get introduced to this strong smart female and suddenly in book 2 she becomes an envious emo princess, while nerd boy turns into Jason Bourne. Seriously? Had high hopes but I don’t think I will continue.

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