short but good story

This is my second of this series and I find them short and they kind of end on a fish tail. It is like the book(s) were artificially cut into pieces or at least cut at the wrong place.

Also the narrator has a great voice but has difficulties creating a different voice for different characters. In context you can follow but it's not as enjoyable as it could be. But he would have a great voice for voice narrations or documentary.

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Somewhat Disappointing

This book represents a moderately wasted opportunity. Tori L. Harris envisions a fascinating dynamic - where humanity (newly promoted to the fraternity of intelligences capable of interstellar travel) is suspicious of being used as a technologically-advanced military power pawn. Both the 'Pellaran Alliance' and the 'Sajek Collective' covet the  ingenuity and ferocity of the Terrans - incentivizing, cajoling, frightening, and threatening the fractious human coalition of earthbound nations to fashion a treaty.
Harris's descriptive abilities are impressive, his conjectures are fed by plausible science, and his well-scripted set-piece space battles and on-the-ground combat encounters are paced beautifully. Unfortunately, he gets preoccupied with technical detail (feeling the need to exhaustively explain every innovation), loses track of pacing, and spends most of his energy on negotiations & politics in this story. The book - clearly designed to progress the overall story arc - actually gets pretty tedious at times. As a part of the series in it's entirety, the book is excellent.. as a standalone SciFi action novel, it's adequate at best.

Likewise unfortunate, an above-average reading performance from Jeffrey Kafer is unable to save the book. Of note, however, Kafer's continued amusing cadence issues (LOUD DIALOGUE - sotto voce text - LOUD DIALOGUE - sotto voce text) only mildly detract from an exemplary emotive read. Hence, choose this Podium Audio production if given the option of this recording or a text version.

Altogether, 'TFS Theseus' rates 6.5 stars out of 10. If you can get it as a 'Plus' selection (as I did), it's a reasonable distraction. Unless you're solidly invested in the 'Terran Fleet Command Saga', however, save your Credit for something else.

[Incidentally: "tactical" hyperspace microjumps during combat and warping missiles alongside their targets (bypassing energy shields) are incredibly cool concepts]

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Sadly it’s a long series

Good narration but it’s easy to see where the writing stretches the story to reach the next book.
Barely finished this book and I don’t care what happens next. Certainly won’t pay for it

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Interesting but too short

If all the sagas were presented as one book it would be a great book. This book alone is incomplete. The story does not go anywhere. It is as if the publisher has broken apart one book and sold the chapters individually, calling each chapter a book.

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1 person found this helpful