Book Review of Chronicles of the Marauder Book 1 by A. G. Moye
I was intrigued by the initial setup. This story might easily take place just a few years from now! Neil wins “the largest lottery jackpot in American history allowing him to fulfill his lifelong dream of going to space.” Using his newfound funds to help finance his dream, he builds a ship to go to the stars on a ten year mission of exploration, hoping to answer the question: Do aliens exist? Due to circumstances beyond his control, sixty-eight percent the crew are females, an idea I found quite interesting. An ex-Naval officer, Janice, is the Commander, and Boris, the inventor of the new drive that takes them faster than light, initially attempts to under-mining Neil’s authority as Captain.
To the author’s credit, there isn’t any “slow action” chapter in the novel! He paints a realistic picture of the crew adjusting to their new lives onboard the ship, as they work out the kinks of the new spaceship. I found this portion of the novel quite “believable,” requiring no stretch of imagination — a good solid reality. Further, I found the character development to be done extremely well. They are not shallow face-cards, but believable, real people, a compliment to the author’s skill.
When the new Boritin space drive is fired up, it works, moving them faster than light, but in so doing, it takes them so far away that they cannot recognize any star patterns and are lost. Undaunted, they begin to explore and discover they have arrived close to an alien debris field, the remnants of a gigantic space battle involving several different species of aliens.
Aliens. I am always keenly interested in how other authors envision and present alien species. I’m not about to spoil this aspect for you, but I will say I was surprised by the originality of the author’s aliens. True, they pose a huge problem for Neil and the crew. What I truly enjoyed was the initial stark contrast between the alien civilizations and our own. I was surprised and amused to discover humanity’s positive aspects, such as love, compassion, and unwillingness to murder, rubbing off on a few of the aliens. The book ends in a cliff-hanger so be prepared to read the second in the series.
The originality, the character development, the realism, the plot and the action sequences are all good.
In the earlier e-book edition, the copy editing was extremely poor. Because of non-standard and sometimes incorrect or lack of punctuation, sentence fragments not part of someone’s speech, participial phrases modifying the wrong target, and more, the text then was very difficult to read. Often, I had to reread a paragraph several times to attempt to decipher what the author intended.
Important note: This is a new e-book printing and the author has made a drastic improvement in all these categories! While some of these still exist, they no longer impede reading this exciting novel. Thus, I give it a four-star rating.
I received a free copy of the earlier printing and the revised printing in exchange for my honest review.