Invisible War
Undying Legion, Book 1
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Invisible War
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Eric Michael Summerer
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By:
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Joe Kassabian
About this listen
Their minds stolen. Uploaded into war-machines. They fight a secret war to preserve humanity.
What if there was a war raging for one million years, but it was kept secret? It's a question Sargis never considered, born as an upper middle class man living in Prime City during a so-called "Millenia of Peace."
As far as he, or anyone else knows, humanity has no army, no weapons, and no wars.
The people of Earth have been expanding into the stars for as long as anyone remembers, free of conflict while the Techno King and his Royal Cabal enrich themselves on the backs of their labor. All was as it always has been.
Then, Sargis dies.
Unbeknownst to him, an app he used every single day of his life hijacks his consciousness and uploads it into a synthetic engine of war known as a sleeve. Along with countless others, he has been conscripted into the Undying Legion, charged with fighting a secret, unending war in the name of humanity.
©2024 Joe Kassabian (P)2024 Tantorthe good:
1) a clever concept for the central plot. very black mirror and with some believable reactions to the setting.
2) clear evidence of in depth world building. clearly a fair amount of thought has gone into fleshing out a history and backstory and it shows. ties into point one - it's very clear that time has been spent thinking through how all this would actually work in practice and the implications for those involved, as well as the wider society.
3) decent acting. not stand out amazing, but solid.
the not so good:
1) a romantic subplot that feels almost entirely crowbarred in. gotta be honest, I didn't really believe the connection there.
2) the opening is a bit wonky. it has this sort of weird hitchhiker's guide by way of cyberpunk 2077 feel, but a bit more clumsy. it doesn't last so don't get put off by it. I get what the author was going for but the satire feels a bit blunt.
oof:
1) some pretty significant grammatical errors. sentences that are poorly constructed, frequent use of the same word within a phrase until it becomes semantically saturated and others. A couple of times the tense changed mid-sentence. in some places it switched between different perspectives and persons in a way that is quite jarring. this badly needs going over by an editor. I am not an expert by any means and I noticed several significant issues of this type.
2) the ethics of the book are... wonky in a way which makes the character seem kind of inconsistent. without wishing to spoil, the main character does a lot of heinous stuff interspersed with periods of complaining about how everyone is doing heinous stuff. it doesn't feel like someone pushing through misgivings or coming to question their actions so much as a complete disconnect between the internal voicing and the actual actions
bottom line: it's a great idea with some lovely world building and the potential for an interesting series but there are some pretty significant issues holding this particular volume back. I wouldn't discard it outright but be aware of what you're heading into.
Quite rough around the edges
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Not a good book
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