Exodus Ark by J N Chaney
Blurb
Kent-9464 was made for war.
But now, forsaken by those who created him, he has been relegated to head of security for a colony ship called Exodus Ark. It’s a one way trip to a new planet far away from everything he's ever known, and the trip is said to take hundreds of years.
The colony world is another Earth, a new beginning for mankind... and completely uninhabited.
But when Kent is prematurely woken up from his stasis pod and told by the ship’s AI that they are under attack by an unknown alien threat, he must recall his years of training and once again become the man he used to be.
Better than average reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, author cranks out plenty of work so I figured with the interesting blurb this one would be worth a go.
It started decently enough with a nice back story. Hero is put into a dangerous situation along with a ships A.I. that seems to be having internal conflicts. Sort of a mashup of the films 2001, Alien and Pandorum.
A couple of things stood out that eventually led me to just give up on this.
The story is told in the 1st person rather than the 3rd person, now sometimes this works, but to do so it needs to be in the hands of a very skilled writer (if it isn't an autobiography), and unfortunately, this isn't the case here.
Some horrific plot holes do not help and after the initial 50 or so pages of decentish storytelling, everything became much of the same. At the 50% mark I couldn't justify spending any more time on this and gave up.
Reviews
1. The book starts well, but after about a hundred pages I was getting quite bored, there was a lot of repetitive padding and the author clearly wanted to be quite mysterious about what was actually happening. My problem was although I found Kent an interesting character, I knew very little about the ship, its capabilities, or even the number of crew and I was becoming quite frustrated trying to understand what was happening and how the ship had got into the mess.
2. This book was definitely enjoyable. However, at the same time, I felt it was a bit of a missed opportunity. I really like the core story idea. There’s a lot that can be done with that plot. The main protagonist is good as well. At least I liked him. He is competent, kicks ass and is in general the type of character I like as a main protagonist. However, as it turns out I found the book “just” good. With all these good ingredients I felt a bit like the author could have done better. I felt like he squandered an opportunity here.
3. A good read with interesting ideas. I enjoyed the issues with the two AIs, it kept me guessing for a while. Looking forward to book2
4. The premise is good and the ideas solid and but the potential is untapped. If this was an early work of his I might understand it, but this is recent stuff. It is just too repetitive and things that could be interesting seem to get glossed over.
I agree with all of these
Price
Free on kindle unlimited - probably the only saving grace.
A decent idea for a story but poor execution.
