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The Second Ship

The Rho Agenda, Book 1

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The Second Ship

Written by: Richard Phillips
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
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In 1948, an alien starship crash-landed in the New Mexico desert and brought with it the key to mankind’s future. Code-named the Rho Project, the landing was shrouded in secrecy, and only the highest-ranking US government and military personnel knew it existed. Until now.

The US president is preparing to unveil one of the nation’s greatest secrets when three students stumble across the wreckage of a second ship outside of Los Alamos. With a single touch, the alien technology the government has spent untold resources trying to unlock is uploaded into the minds of three teenagers — teenagers who now know the frightening truth about the Rho Project.The battle for humanity has begun.

©2012 Richard Phillips (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc. Adventure Fantasy Fiction Science Fiction Government
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Richard Philips is a excellent plotter and a decent writer. His abundant research also shows; the author holds a Masters Degree in Physics and has a background in the US Army. MacLeod Andrews as narrator couldn't be better here. But to sum up quickly - it feels like the best computer-generated fiction ever. It's filled with tropes, is incredibly American-centric, implicitly but not explicitly sexist, violent with cardboard, stereotypical characters. Cis-males, this is the book for you. It has the traditional filters: letting incredible violence through, but censoring swearing and sex. Actually, sex is there, but mostly its a drive for perverted villains or is used to signal the morally ambiguous. It's even used to signal the heroes drift to moral ambiguity: their first murder comes within pages of their first explicit sexual thoughts. No coincidence there.

The parent-child relationships are all idealized garbage [insert barfing sound]. It's easy to suspend disbelief about the aliens, but that defies it; "Leave it to Beaver" is edgy in comparison. I kid you not.

But the plot is good, and occasionally surprising and that's not easy to do. The narrator nails everything: voices, pacing, etc, although here he's more of an excellent reader than a great performer; this isn't Jake Gyllenhaal reading Great Gatsby. It is also fairly twisted in places, which against such banal backgrounds is weird; shades of Steven King, but without the fascinated- can't-look-away horror that make's him great.

But damnation aside, it isn't worse than standard American fiction hoping to be made into a Disney movie without an R-rating. It's more exciting than most. Read it for the plot and you'll be pleased. If you can't get past the rest, I respect you, and feel some shame. I bought and listened to them all.

4 stars plot and narrator, 2 everything else

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The story is very imaginative, fast moving story and the narrator was the perfect choice to read these books.

Very exciting story.

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