Space Opera – Read with Me

After three decades as a Pervenio Corporation Collector, chasing wanted offworlders and extinguishing protests throughout the solar system, Malcolm Graves doesn’t bother asking questions. So long as the pay is right, he’s the man for the job. But his latest assignment doesn’t afford him that luxury.

A high-profile bombing on Earth has the men who sign Malcolm’s paychecks clamoring for answers. They force him to team up with a strange, augmented partner who’s more interested in statistics than instinct, and ship them both off to Titan to hunt down a suspected group of extremists: Titanborn rebels who will go to any length to free their home from the tyranny of Earth’s corporations.

Heading into hostile territory, Malcolm will have to use everything he’s learned to stay alive. But he soon realizes the situation on the ground is much more complex than he anticipated…and much more personal.

Check out the thrilling first book in a gritty and innovative science-fiction series perfect for fans of The Expanse and Blade Runner. You can also grab in on Audible performed by the award-winning RC Bray, narrator of The Martian.

Science fiction is one of my favorite types of books to read. I love reading about space exploration, colonies, and races/species. I can thank my grandfather for influencing me in my love of sci-fi. He loved Star Trek and would watch the series and the movies all the time. He would encourage my 2 brothers and me to come and watch with him. He was always finding sci-fi books, reading them, and then giving them to me to read. It would be safe to say that my Papa would have loved this book.

This book is great, from the opening scene to the surprising ending. The backstory is great too. Earth was decimated by an extinction-level meteor and lost about 99.9% of its population. Before the meteor hits, people were shipped off-world to one of the moons of Saturn. Then Earth lost contact with them. By the time the people of Earth got in contact with them again, 2-3 centuries had gone by. The descendants of those colonists had adapted to the climate of Titan. Earth has an interest in harvesting Saturn’s rings. They are terraforming/populating Titan. Which is pissing off the locals.

I liked the characters too. They were very flawed. Malcolm Graves is a workaholic/alcoholic who drove away his only daughter with his work. Zhaff was part of a top-secret research facility experiment called The Cognet. He is more like a human computer (has no emotions). An explanation later in the book made me go, “Ahhhhh, now I understand.“

3 things I liked about Titanborn:

Malcolm Graves
Zhaff
The story

3 things I disliked about Titanborn

Aria
The Ringers storyline
Lucien Pervenio

I would recommend Titanborn to anyone over 21. There is extreme violence, language, and sexual situations.

If you enjoyed reading Titanborn, you will enjoy reading these books:

Horizon Alpha: Predators of Eden by [Vogel, D. W.]

Publisher: Future House Publishing

Date of Publication: May 19, 2016

Genre: Science Fiction, Dinosaurs, Adventure, Young Adult, Space Opera, Action, Thriller

Series: Horizon Alpha

High Wire—Book 0.5

Predators of Eden—Book 1

Transport Seventeen—Book 2

Homecoming—Book 3

Purchase Links: Amazon | Audible |B&N |Kobo |Google Play

Goodreads synopsis:

We never would have come here if we’d known.

Two hundred years ago, the great Ark Horizon Alpha escaped a doomed Earth and went searching for a new home. The passengers landed on Teu Ceti e expecting paradise, but instead, they discovered a planet stuck in its own version of the cretaceous period. The humans’ one defense against the dinosaurs ravaging the planet is an electric fence, built from the remains of the shuttles that brought them there.

But Eden’s base has only days of power left.

With most of the adult men dead, rookie soldier Caleb Wilde and his unit of teenage boys leave the electric fences of Eden in search of a reactor core lost deep in the jungle.

The last remnant of the human race waits behind the electric fence for their return. The dinosaurs wait, too–for the electricity to die and the feast to begin.

This book was fantastic!!! I don’t like sci-fi with dinosaurs in the book. The one book I read that used them as antagonists went WAY overboard. It killed my enthusiasm for reading any books of the same.

Well, I am happy to say that this book has righted the wrongs of the other book. From the beginning, when Caleb tells about what happened to Earth, the 2 centuries of traveling throughout space and the accident that fragmented the population of the spaceship onto the new planet (Teu Ceti), and the frightening discovery that the new settlers made, drew me right into the story.

The author makes you feel the excitement and dread of Caleb going on his first mission. Then the terror of the crash and the exhaustion of trekking cross-country to Eden base and losing unit members to the dinosaurs. I had nightmares about the descriptions of the T-Rex and the other dinosaurs.

I will say that I loved the 2 twists in the story. One, I should have seen coming from a mile away, I am good at guessing things like that, but I didn’t. The other one, near the end of the book, well, to be honest, it made me want to cry. Very poignant.

If you enjoyed reading Predators of Eden, you will enjoy reading these books: