Christopher Hopper

Ruins of the Galaxy is an action-adventure space opera that begins when Recon Marine platoon leader Adonis Magnus (How’s that for a name that is hard to live up to?) is assigned to protect a Awen, a Luma diplomat (How’s that for a name that says the force is with her?), at an interstellar peace conference. When bombs go off at the peace conference, Awen and Adonis are led on a merry chase as refugees. But not to worry, Awen can always enter the Unity, a spiritual realm that enables show more out-of-body espionage and other paranormal goodies.

The best way to experience Ruins is through the audiobook narrated by R. C. Bray. In Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, Betty Higden praises the boy Sloppy by saying, “He do the police in different voices.” Of R. C. Bray, I would say, “He do the aliens in different voices.”

I would like to know more about the collaboration between Christopher Hopper and J. N. Chaney. Hopper self-published a version of the story under the title Eye of War. Variant, a small-press house organ for collaborations by Chaney, picked it up. How much editing do you have to do to merit a co-author credit? How much to be listed first on the title page? In my edition, Chaney gets first billing, which may be more of a marketing decision than an accurate representation of its creative process.

Bottom Line: Too much Star Wars. Not enough Star Trek. 3.5. show less

Taking up where he left off, Christopher Hopper embarks on a tale beginning in destruction and ending in destruction. The world of Dionia is in ruins, their Kings have all fallen, and even the Most High has seemingly abandoned them. Morgui’s power is growing, his might spreading to the remotest parts of the land. The fallen one’s plan extends deep into Earth, as the Only Son prepares to lay His life down.

It is at this point, the weakest in all of the world’s time, that the Order of the show more White Lion—The Lion Vrie—reveal themselves.

Pick up this book, and enter another world. Christopher Hopper is by far the best world-builder since Tolkien. Matching, if not surpassing him, in languages, cultures, history, morality, characters, and more! The terror is real, the hope is powerful, and the love will bring you to tears. Laugh-out-loud-in-the-face-of-danger style humor and eloquence only the ancient world can bring.

The villains are wretchedly evil, it made me sick. And the heroes are immensely loyal, men and women of God, courageous in the site of hell itself, and broken servants of the Most High God.

Read this book, and come face to face with the true Maker of this world. Be prepared for your life to be changed. Join the Lion Vrie.

Oh yeah, and be prepared to storm Mr. Hopper’s home. He wrote one heck of a cliff hanger! show less

A brilliant debut, that has been very well plotted and paste. This does feel as though it is a pulp adventure in the grand old 1930s style. Paragraph there are even cliffhangers at the end of every chapter. Yes some of it is contrived, yes quite a lot of it is not original but the military parlance, comedic interactions between the characters and an ability to take inject humour. I want to to read the next one!

I'm not a big epic fantasy fan. But The Lion Vrie was awesome. It's not something I could read straight through without being bored out of my mind (I read it over the course of three months between many, many other books), but I don't think it was really meant to be. It's just so deep.

Intense and emotional, gruesome yet beautiful.

If you can ignore the editor's shortcomings with the grammatical errors, you'll find the writing to be incredible as well. So basically, if you're a fan of epic show more fantasies, you're missing out, and if you're not, well, just make sure you've got three months to read it in. I'm eagerly awaiting book three: Athera's Dawn. I hear it's even longer. show less