Taran Hunt

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday. The verdict: Yes, probably, although I’m undecided on whether I’ll stick to audio or do it in print.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Rory Alexander. I liked his narration. He was easy to listen to, with a pleasant English accent and good distinction between characters, not that there were many characters he had to narrate in the first place. There are several characters, but only three that get much page time.

Story
The story focuses on Sean, one of two survivors from his home of Kystrom, who apparently has a tendency to get himself in trouble. He ends up in prison, and is coerced into going with a team of other convicts to an enormous derelict ship about to be destroyed by a supernova. His objective is to retrieve data believed to be on it that holds clues to immortality. Naturally this data is in high demand, so there’s some competition and things quickly go awry. I didn’t find this creepy, but there’s a lot of creeping around, sometimes in the dark, trying to avoid getting attacked by enemies, so it might seem creepy for some.

This is a simple, straight-forward story. There are some mysteries about what happened on the ship, and about the motives of the different factions, but I thought things were telegraphed pretty obviously and I predicted most key plot twists well before they happened. I can’t necessarily think of anything else I’ve read that was very similar to this, and yet it felt familiar anyway. It had a lot of familiar tropes, I guess. They were things I enjoyed though, and I think my tolerance for simpler stories is higher in the audiobook format.

I liked the characters and would like to spend more time with them. I’m a sucker for the trope where people with conflicting beliefs and motives are forced to work together and then they begin to develop respect for each other and start to look at things differently, so I think that contributed to my enjoyment.

The main plot of this book is resolved by the end, but there are several open threads left hanging and a “huh?” moment near the end that was clearly intended to try to hook people into reading the next book. I’ll wait until the series is complete before revisiting it.… (more)

A linguist? In space? Sign me in immediately! Le’ts start with the languages since I really want to talk about this. I enjoyed the way Sean learns and uses some aspects of the Light Language during the novel. To be nit-picky, the other languages used or written are not described enough to my liking, so for example, I think that Ameng means American English, but you have to guess and we don’t really know what the human characters’ current languages sound like. But that’s just because I wanted more linguistics :)
The plot itself was interesting and fast-paced enough, with memories used (a bit heavily at some moments) to give enough context and backstory when necessary. I wasn’t surprised by the ending or some twists (well, not the very last one ;)) especially with the message that you can see being built by the narration, but it was done in a nice way that didn’t pull me out. Some scenes were too repetitive and there were a few plot holes, but in the last chapters (no spoilers) I was feeling the psychological stress of Sean and the patterns created before broke, in a good way.
I’m not sure what to think of Sean himself, he had this slightly annoying Han Solo / Indiana Jones vibe that made me think of him as Harrison Ford during the whole book. The backstory made him progressively less caricatural and more likeable but the vibe was still there. The other characters like Indigo and Tamara were interesting.
Overall, an enjoyable read with food for thought!

I want to thank NetGalley and Rebellion Publishing for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.… (more)