Qalea Drop cover art

Qalea Drop

Spiral Wars, Book 7

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Qalea Drop

By: Joel Shepherd
Narrated by: John Lee
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About this listen

The UFS Phoenix embarks on a dangerous quest for the AI Ceephay Queen who rules at the heart of the Reeh Empire. For cover, Phoenix will use the enormous war being launched by the new rulers of the croma, Croma'Dokran, into reeh space. This war is intended in part to evacuate the corbi homeworld of Rando, thus righting a great wrong of croma history by rescuing 200 million corbi from reeh tyranny.

While Lisbeth defies her parren seniors to use drysine and parren firepower in assisting the evacuation, Erik captains Phoenix, accompanied by Styx's four drysine warships, to the world of Eshir, where Styx insists the Ceephay Queen was once located. There, in the ancient, ruined city of Qalea, Trace and Styx must lead an away mission through buried layers of Reeh Empire history to uncover its long-forgotten secrets. Discovering the Ceephay Queen's present location could set them on the road to saving humanity. But Qalea's secrets have been hidden by the reeh for millennia, secrets that could rock their Empire, and they will stop at nothing to keep hidden.

©2020 Joel Shepherd (P)2020 Audible, Inc.
Hard Science Fiction Military Science Fiction Fiction Royalty War

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All stars
Most relevant
No spoilers.

Negatives:
A bit of a slow start as it uses a fair bit of time to establish what this book is about.

Always a bit heavy to get your bearings in the start, with placing all the names, races, factions and their associations with these books.

Some might find the jumping between so many characters, and their stories a bit annoying. Can seem a bit "overcrowded" as such.

There is something that happens in the book that is such a typical cliché, and I really was hoping for something different in this series...

There are ...issues between humans and Drysines that never really gets addressed.

Positives:
It's a direct continuation of the previous book.

New exiting environments

Get to know Major Thakur a bit more in-depth.

Top notch voice acting.


Glad I read it, looking forward to the next.

A strong new book.

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Smart writing and great narration. What more could you ask for? Bring on the next volume in the series!

The excellence continues

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This is one of my favourite SF series - I can't wait for the next one. The universe of the series is elaborate and fascinating with many alien species and AIs. Whenever there is a conflict between humans and friendly AIs I usually find myself rooting for the AIs - this is how well developed the AI characters are. All the characters are very well developed. The narration by John Lee Is excellent as usual.

This is one of my favourite SF series

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With this latest instalment, I feel Joel Shepherd has again managed to find new forms of adventure and humour to add to his fantastic sci-fi saga. It’s not perfect but it’s head and shoulders above most of the contemporary alternatives I’ve read. And puts him alongside Ann Lecke for me as a standout author of new-universe storytelling. Can’t wait for the next one!! But I do live in terror of him killing off one of the central characters he has built up...please don’t!

As good as earlier volumes

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Really great series. Gets better with every book. Keeps you guessing and the narration is top notch. If you like the culture and P F Hamilton stuff this series is one to listen too. Never read the books but don’t feel I need to now as they have come to life in these audiobooks

Best book of the series so far

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