Too derivative

The opening of this book felt like the author watched the newer Battlestar Galatica and decided to put a little of their own spin on it. Its not a bad book, just extremely obvious.

4 people found this helpful

Derivative, familiar

Nick Webb must watch the same TV shows I do. I also try to write, but when I find myself drifting too close to an idea someone has already used, or just flat out copying the idea, I stop and start over. Webb doesn't have that filtering process. He borrows pretty liberally from Battlestar Galactica, Ender's Game and little from Star Trek (A starship engineer named Scott? Sure! I'll just make her female!) before adding any twists and turns to make the story his own. Really, I thought I was listening to an alternate take on BSG for about half the book as I could almost assign book characters to TV characters one to one. The bummer with this take is the "Adama" (Grainger) is not as inspiring. He's just a blow hard who really shouldn't be as good at space navy tactics as *SPOILER* he may turn out to be.

Once the "borrowing" of familiar groundwork was done, I like he story itself and may continue with the series if they are on sale.

19 people found this helpful

Battlestar Galactica on steroids

Loved this, being an old school Battlestar Galactica fan I immediately saw the heavy influence in the first part of the book. Old carrier about to be decommissioned, drunk 1st officer, battle hardened stubborn commander, what appears to be a tech heavy race bent on destroying earth, etc. However the story takes a different path than BG, in a very interesting way. Definitely found myself listening for hours on end, I couldn't get enough. I hope audible and the author add more books in this series soon. Cannot wait to hear the next chapter in this saga! Great performance by the reader as well, highly recommended.

12 people found this helpful

I'm not sure what to think about this one..

Any additional comments?

Ok first off i just want to say that the beginning of the book felt a lot like Battlestar Galactica. The similarities are too numerous and too close to get over. On the other side I absolutely love Battlestar Galactica. It's one of my favorite stories, so no big deal right? ...kind of. I couldn't stop listening to the audiobook. The performance was excellent. 5 stars. It fit the genre i was looking for perfectly so i had no complaints there. Except for the details. I feel like the similarities to Battlestar Galactica could have been avoided and the story would have felt just as good because it really was just in the details. I mean how many other sci fi stories are at least a little similar to BSG...more than a few. I'm going to keep my eye on the series and see how the second book goes. Not trying to spoil anything but a few of the similarities between this and BSG may not be there in the other books. So it might be something I can look past. Sorry about the rambling folks. Hope this review helps. There's a lot of negativity about this book and i will say it deserves a bit of it, but I think if you can get past it this story could go places. Give it a chance if you're on the fence. Form your own opinion.

22 people found this helpful

Very enjoyable and fast paced ride

What made the experience of listening to Constitution the most enjoyable?

So a lot has been said about this being a Battlestar Galactica re-hash, and yes similarities exist and some inspiration was probably drawn from it. That said this is a story on its own and the similarities stop at the Captain and EXO's personalities and failings.
Well worth the purchase of a SCI-FI Opera Fan.
This story has legs and can go places in the seat of you pants suspense and fast paced story line category.

Did Greg Tremblay do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

Overall as the majority of characters are male he does reasonably well - especially with the gruff personalities he portrays. Though he seriously lacks in the portrayal of the female characters like Shelby Procter

Any additional comments?

Keep it up Nick Webb- though take some time developing the suspense some more.
Delve some into the science and the limitations of fleet - create more intrigue with the government, the Russians and Swarm.
Throw in a view curve balls and you have a good recipe.

5 people found this helpful

NOTHING FANCY, JUST THE TRIED AND TRUE

WHY MAKE FRIENDS, WHEN THEY WILL INEVITABLY DISAPPOINT YOU?
Ender's Game, Star Trek and even a shout out to War Of The Worlds was included in this book. I read the reviews and knew before a bought this, that the book was not real original. I had no problem with that, as most books are a repeat of old themes. Plus I like all those shows. I wish they would have warned me about how cliché the whole books is. It seemed to me that they took the script from several movies and shows, added all the cliché military lines they could think of, stuck them in a computer and told the computer to write a novel.

Nothing happened in the first three hours. A lot of authors, especially for smaller books will start with a battle event or spotting the aliens or anything with some excitement to it. Nick spends three hours setting up his universe. When the action starts the main character proves his cowardliness, by following orders to save some politicians over 30 children. He proves his manhood by making a thinly veiled sarcastic remark to the politician.

Did you know that in the future, the cold war will still be going on. That the British will be in space along with the Americans and the Russians. The Chinese, Japanese , French or anyone else will not be in space. At least in the first four hours there was no mention of them.

This is not a bad book, nor is it a good book. It just is. For me, I got down on it and just could not like it. Every time the characters spotted off some cliché line or tried to curse, it came out sounding silly to me. I don't know if it was the writing or the narrator, but I thought they sounded like a bunch of seventh graders trying to sound tough.

18 people found this helpful

Unoriginal and inconsistent

I’m confused. The aliens can travel from the edge of the solar system to the moon in just over an hour, but the time to get from the moon to earth takes, what seems like hours.

1 person found this helpful

formulaic sci-fi

Sooo very very predictable. Platitudes, cliches, and plot sequences basically lifted from other works made for boredom if it wasn't so laughable.
All this smothered in quantum gibberish to try to make it more palatable.

1 person found this helpful

Disappointed

Pop corn space opera, I love a good sci-fi story, this was to simple, very quick paced, maybe to fast. Narration was less then desired. Characters are very predicable. Oh well, will try to find something with a little more depth.

1 person found this helpful

Comfortable TV trope, science illiterate

Read the book and bought the audio book and sorta enjoyed the warm predictable TV script from the last century.
Makes BSG look well researched. Enough

1 person found this helpful