Better than 1st 2

This seemed to be developing more of a story line & was more involved than it's predecessors & thus a bit more interesting.
The Narrator, for me, at least, makes it extremely hard to notice when scenes change as all the voices are the same & the cadence never changes despite how lively or commonplace the action is.

A description of a boring patrol sounds the same as when it's the middle of a very full on, up close & personal grueling & bloody battle.

I'd rather enjoy a book that makes it easy for me to know what character is speaking and where the location is, etc. This is especially important as the story isn't told from the POV of one or even several main characters.

It's told from the POV of whichever character the scene is about, so it's always jumping all over the place & gets extremely confusing. This also makes it hard to figure out what's going on and what the story is about & even more so as this changes from book to book.

Normally a book is told from the perspective of one person or a smaller group of central figures on both sides of the conflict. You don't get POVs of more minor or side characters until the spin off series comes out, after the original series is completed, or at least, further along.

This book has barely any storyline about who I thought was the main character, Lance Scipio. The first, Book 0, a prequel is a little disjointed at 1st but finally settles into focusing on Lance.
AAQ!
Then the 2nd installment, which is Book 1 in Series, is still mostly about the Lance & his life when he awakes 35 yrs in the future & much has changed, so there's a whole new set of factions & groups to keep track of & where it starts to get confusing.

Now this 3rd Installment, Book 2 is a continuation of the same time/places as Book 1, but, at least in the last 1/2 doesn't even includes our main hero, Lance. He isn't mentioned once during the big battle that encompasses the latter part of this book.

Instead it jumps from POV of a bunch of people/aliens on both sides & keeps unexpectedly bopping around. You get one portion around his former aide, an Engineer who goes from Servant to Marine in Book 1 (2nd story), but that's as close as it gets.

The names each side or race calls itself and calls it's enemy are so totally different it gets even more confusing as humans aren't called humans by the Janisarys (sp?) but something that's 2 words, the 1st which sounds like Neff-Nads(sp?) or something or other like that!. Took me a while to figure out who they were fighting & which side they were from.

You've got the Human Legion, Lances group, which has humans and 3 alien races in it, there's Joton leaders, at least 1 Hardit & another alien race that starts with an S. that's supposed to be the boogeyman that humans scare their kids by with tales of how frightening they are but Unless I missed something, they are talked about as being active participants but Didn't run into scenes with them actually in it.

Then there's another human marine faction fighting that has, I think, Jotun leaders too,
& they're taking Hardit slaves & turning them into monstrosities via surgically & chemically conversions which neuters them, called Janisarys. The 3rd group is rebelling Hardit slaves & they may or may not have another alien race helping them, because they're able to fly without surgery & chemicals, & have super advanced aircraft, beyond what even the White Knights, who are all of these group's absent overlords, who apparently abandoned this star system to fight other bigger fights somewhere over the rainbow.
Lance's group, the Human Legion has rebelled against the White Knights, the other group with humans in it is called the New Order & they believe that their masters will return & are 'keeping the light on' for them, so to speak.
During this book, a group from the enemy New Order breaks off and joins the Human Legion, just to make matters even more confusing! I think the New Order also has Jotun leaders too, the same as the Human Legion. And if Jotuns aren't being described as unsheathing their claws or baring their fangs, you wouldn't know they weren't a human leader, not at least by the narration, because everyone sounds the same!
...are you staring to get as confused as me yet?!

I wasn't really 100% sure which group has the Janisarys in it, quite frankly, until I got 1/2 dz chapers into the Next book in the series & had to come back here & edit this because I'd had it right at 1st, but then thought I was wrong & changed it, making it truly wrong & it went up that way & has been here all day until just now, I've Changed it back to how it 1st was, which was correct. Janisarys belong to the New Order.

It's hard when you get cobfused on who's who with audible much more so than print.
It's harder to find a past section easily that might explain whatever you're trying to figure out than it is in print, where you can just flip thru the pages scanning for the word Janisary & discover the answer much more quickly & it's easier to get back to where you left off again too.

I'm not particularly fond of books that are so confusing I have to do things like that. Usually I can keep listening & it's clarified as story goes along. With this book, even though I did jump back sometimes as much as 5-7 chapters & jumped back several times (I listen when going to sleep and skip back a couple chapters the next night to where I last remember something), but I got tired of going back, & just continued & eventually by the 4th story (Book 3) I figured out it's 3 groups, not 2 fighting each other.

After listening to the last battle sequences a 2nd time, it was less confusing but not enough for me to know which of the 2 enemy groups the Janisarys belong too. Didn't discover that until I was well into the beginning of the book after this one!

I did catch that the group with Hardits & Janisarys has factions within it & troops defecting, but Im not sure where they're defecting to. I also think the Hardits group has divides divided amongst it too. And of course the humans have spys, probably on both sides
At the end of this book I think the Humam Legion wins, but not w/o suffering severe losses.

Anyway, this review is probably about as confusing as listening to the story, sorry! (At least I'm not asking people to pay me to read this!), but this is how the book reads to me.

I did just take a look at the kindle version of this & at the beginning of a chapter it listed Lance & the human officers under his direct command & if they do that alot for all the different groups, especially if there's an outline at beginning or end, that would be really helpful to have to keep track of who's who. Sadly it doesn't work as well in an audible format.

Unfortunately- you don't have the luxury. I listen to get transported to another world & enjoy the action & fantasy of the booj's world & get invested in the characters so that I want to know what happens next & books that have a confusing cast of characters and don't limit the number of POVs they tell the story from & make quick hops all over the place, just aren't as enjoyable to listen to.

As it's free, I'll try the next, Book 3, the 4th story & hopefully the chaos of characters gets less confusing & the author doesn't kill off too many of the characters I'm just figuring out & can remember, to go off onto new ones!

If it sticks to Lance & a few key people around him & the leaders of the other factions & just a couple close to them, it might get better. I'll see!

I still wouldn't spend a credit on this, but if you've got time to kill & it's incl in your membership, it seems a number of other folks actually like this series - so beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.. 'pick it up' and see for yourself.

And please, please Mr. Handley, get yourself a better narrator. The current one doesn't do ANYTHING good for your books. You should have someome who elevates a story, rather than aend it stumbling down the stairs.
Please forgive me any spelling eor name errors. If you find this review useful in any way, Id like to know & I will if you click on the helpful button. Thanks.

2 people found this helpful

Gimme the Anchor, Globe and Eagle

Marine Lance Scipio's is thawed again to a fate worse than death and made an officer. His story continues but major questions from the first book are barely alluded to in this second book in the Sleeping Legion series

2 people found this helpful

Terrific Military SciFi

The Sleeping Legion is full of new tech and new aliens, friend and foe. Characters are surprisingly well developed for both the human legion and alien forces. The only negative I have is that the short chapters all begin with long introduction of what element of the marines, what day and time, plus where they are, it makes it seem like half the story is taken up with this information.

1 person found this helpful

THIS IS GARBAGE!!!

This is what happens when someone writes a book about Marines that has no clue or could NEVER make it through USMC Bootcamp!! They get it all wrong! Our attitudes, arrogance, our reputations in war and peace time, and our adherence to traditions. This book and series urinates all over the backbone of what it takes to be a Marine. Ive read better stories on the walls of public restrooms. This series should be avoided at all cost!!!

this turned into a hard rated R

this was a good story until they decided to make it a hard rated R for no reason in the middle. Too bad I'll never find out what happens. Guess I'll find a better author somewhere else.

Action, for action sake

The Sleeping Legion is a full speed ahead battle. From the first book in the series to the last there is no let up in the action. Players come and go, targets change - get added and then subtracted after bloody conflict.

Keep Going

If you read the first one it only gets better. Keep following Lance as his story unfolds.

Excellent! Was good to the last word...

Fast paced, exciting & easy to listen to. The narrator does an outstanding job. Worth your time all the way through.