Kept me listening.

A well paced story. Sometimes predictable but mostly attention grabbing. Nicely delivered by the narrator.

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Great second boom

The story telling hooked me since the first book.
I know this is a long series and at times it felt a bit dragged out unnecessarily. But even with that it is superb. The narrator as well

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Better Than The First In The Series

I was in two minds whether to read this second book in the Star Force series
after my rather ambivalent feelings regarding the first. however, I tend to
give a first book in any series the benefit of the doubt if I'm not sure and
so I purchased Star Force: Extinction to see if this series is worthy of
continuing with. Don't get me wrong, I really like B V Larson's writing when
I first came across his work in the Undying Mercenaries series but was a
little under whelmed with the first book in the Star Force series in overall
terms despite its promising beginnings.

The second instalment of this series picks up directly where the first left
off seeing our protagonist, Kyle Riggs, having negotiated a truce with the
Macro's and now wondering just how he is going to deliver on that. This
story is really a book of two halves as it were in story terms. The first
part is very much like the first in terms of much of the key elements being
present. I was becoming more and more hopeful that the irritating character
of Crow would finally be expunged from this series until he makes an
annoying re-appearance in chapter 11. The Sandra character is still pretty
much just a sex object for Riggs and it seems whenever he's with her that he
cannot think of much else but ogling her or having sex. In the best of
circumstances this might be more understandable but there are several
instances where Riggs remarks on her shapely form etc after having fought
for his life! Kind of strange to me but hey, what do I know, I've never been
in combat.

Where this book redeems itself is in the second act that sees Riggs and
company deliver on their deal with the Macros and head off to parts unknown
to fight for their new machine task masters. This is where Larson excels in
his depiction of strange alien worlds that have different types of stars
shining in their skies than the yellow stars like our own Sol. Further,
unlike a lot of pulp science fiction where the gravity on alien planets
always seems to be the same as Earth's we find our Nano enhanced Marines
land upon an alien world that is almost twice the gravity of our Earth, an
unbreatheable atmosphere and a red giant star for a sun. The indigenous life
too are anything but humanoid and pose a formidable adversary to the Riggs'
ground pounders. Brutal and visceral fighting takes place and this is where
Larson always manages to deliver as he does in the Undying Mercenaries
books.

We also find that the Macros appear to have some exotic faster than light
speed travel technology which is depicted in an unusual way I thought
interesting. Not entirely original, of course, but a different
implementation that is not space based.

Just a couple of minor plot anomalies I noticed in this story. The first was
that it was stated that the language used by the Nanos and Macros was
basically the same and yet in the first book Riggs had to do quite a bit of
work to decode the language as his Nano ship had evidentially not been able
to translate it. The second thing comes near the closing stages of the book
where a character called Sloane is injured in his tank and has compound
fractures to his legs as I recall. However, in just a few minutes he appears
to be able to run along with a Nano filament without any difficulties. I
know that Nano troops have a much faster healing ability than unmodified
humans but this seems to me to be an error from Larson. As ever though, such
minor observations do not affect my enjoyment of this story in the least.

If the second part of this book is now the pattern for forthcoming stories
in this series then I am going to be reading more of these books. If you
were unsure, like me, after reading the first book in this series then I can
recommend this one as I found it a much better and satisfying read than the
first.

I can see that Larson does appear to have gotten much of his inspiration for
this and his undying Mercenaries combat narrative from the Starship Troopers
movie. There was a line in this book that I had heard in the aforementioned
film where Riggs tells a nervous officer that he has the job now until he
dies or is replaced by someone better or words to that effect. I like this
influence as it makes for a fairly rare breed of science fiction that isn't
afraid to get down and dirty and avoid being overly cerebral.

Recommended.

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Good

It was a good story, as good as the first. Less sophisticated and more action with a lot of violence. The one main problem is the lack of care showed for the marines dying on the battlefield. Overall it as a more action-packed with one main fight drawn out, yet still very entertaining.

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great book.

Excellent 2nd book. What does book three have installed for readers. Good Read. next book.

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enjoyable not as good as the first

enjoyable and didn't have to think too much.would recommend if you enjoy SciFi then give it a go

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great series, absolutely love it

If you liked undying mercenaries you will like this one too. I've only wished there were more books in the series . Pls keep them coming mr Larsen

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quality trash sci fi.

quality trashy science fiction. More focus on sex than the story needed, thankfully not quite enough to stop me listening.

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Not as good as the first

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

Yes. Relaxing and interesting.
Most of the time looking forward to what comes next.
Some of the characters becoming predictable, hopefully the 'girlfriend' gets killed off quite quickly!

What does Mark Boyett bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

Accents for characters interesting. Some good, but some comically awful, especially the rather dubious ship voice.

Was Extinction worth the listening time?

Yes, not as good as the first but willing to give the third a try.

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Good continuing of the story

In general - to say very short - if you liked the first book in the series, you'll like this one too.

I think that this book is a very well made continuing to the first one. What I liked most about it is that at the very beginning of the book there were no usual phrases "and after a week... month... year... since the last book ended, happened this and that". No, there was a feeling like you never had put down the first book at all, it continued just were it had left us, in the exact spot. I loved that fact because that way I didn't lose any of the details of the story as a whole. It really helps to blend in with the main character, too.

I have to admit that sometimes the surprises in the book were unexpected like it was supposed to be but sometimes you were waiting for the main character to at last see what you already predicted long ago. But I didn't let it ruin the joy of reading the book. :) Starting the next one in the series already. ;)

And like I said when I reviewed the first book, the narrator is just amazing!

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