Supposedly an exciting caper. Cut-out characters, ridiculous problem-solving. I remember his earlier novels fondly, but I probably read them when I was a teenager. Teenaged-me might have liked this one too. ( )

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Fortress in Orion
Series: Dead Enders #1
Author: Mike Resnick
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SFF
Pages: 306
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

Nathan Pretorias, a secret agent for the Democracy, has returned from yet another impossible mission. Well, parts of him returned. Now he has been tagged to carry out a truly impossible mission:
replace the war chief Michtag, the universal dictator of the aliens fighting humanity with a clone raised by humans and trained

Nathan assembles his own team of specialists, all misfits in one way or another. They make their way to the super secret fortress on the super secret planet deep in the Coalition. They kidnap and replace General Michtag and successfully make their way back to the Democracy.

Where Nathan's superior presents yet another impossible mission, a mission only the Dead Ender's can take on.

My Thoughts:

While I absolutely loved Santiago and the Widowmaker series, this reminded much more of the Starship series. Space Opera at its most mediocre. There simply wasn't any tension. While Resnick excels at telling a myth style story set in the future, he's not so good at just telling a character story.

For an impossible fortress and impossible mission, everything went off without a hitch. No matter how good your team is, something is going to go wrong and everything is going to be flubbed up. That just didn't happen here and so like I said, there was zero tension. If there had been a lot of action or something else, even that could be gotten past, but there really wasn't much else.

Resnick seems to be very hit or miss for me and I have a feeling this Dead Enders trilogy is going to be a miss. I hope I am proved wrong, but I'm very much getting the same vibe from this book that I got from the middle Starship book. That does not bode well. I'm still giving this 3stars for the newness of the story but if the second book is just as blasé, I'll be dropping the rating accordingly.

★★★☆☆ ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

One of the things I've come to realize about myself in the last several years is that when I call myself a "science-fiction fan," that's actually a bit of a misnomer; I should instead really call myself a "science-fiction dilettante," because as I learned after attending Worldcon in Chicago a couple of years ago (my first SF convention in 25 years), there's really only a tiny layer of SF novels I genuinely enjoy in any given year, the really unusual and extra-smart stuff by writers who often have conflicted relationships with SF fandom to begin with (oh, hello there, China Mieville), but that I can't really stand the middlebrow space-opera stuff that actually makes up the majority of output of the genre in any given year, but that is the exact favorites of the kinds of super-fans who attend a lot of the conventions, vote for the Hugo Award every year, etc. Mike Resnick is one of these con-favorite authors -- in fact, he was the Worldcon Guest Of Honor the year I attended -- and his new The Fortress in Orion is exactly the kind of middlebrow stuff I'm talking about; it's not very smart but not very dumb either, not too fast-paced but not too slow, with the most stereotypical of hacky premises driving its utterly guessable three-act plot (a cocky yet effective military commander who plays by his own rules is tasked with infiltrating enemy lines on a daring spy mission, and hand-picks a series of sassy rogues and sexy criminals to pull it off), but with hardcore fans loving this stuff because it's fast to get through (a must for the kinds of core genre fans who tear through an entire middlebrow novel a day, every day, whether that's SF or fantasy or crime or romance you're talking about), and because Resnick will actually hang out with you at the next con and buy you a beer for liking his book.

Certainly not a bad novel, in the same way that a typical episode of a typical low-budget syndicated TV show on the SyFy Network isn't "bad," nonetheless it goes down with the same kind of generic smoothness, and leaves just as short of a lasting impression, a good way to kill a Saturday afternoon but with nothing much better that one can say about it. I read and review such books regularly here anyway, because I read and review any book that a publisher takes the time to send me (and to be clear, our pals at Pyr don't just put out these kinds of books, but also the kinds of amazing, mind-bending stuff that constitutes the best of this genre too); but I can't say that I'm ever excited by another of these "fan-fave paying-the-bills" mid-list titles, nor that I'll even remember the experience of reading it another six months from now. ("What do you mean, I actually watched the entire fourth season of Stargate SG-1 with you last summer? Why do I have no memory of watching the entire fourth season of Stargate SG-1 with you last summer?") This should all be kept in mind before picking up a copy yourself.

Out of 10: 7.5 ( )

ABR's full The Fortress in Orion (Dead Enders Book 1) audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

I always like a good military space romp. Having never heard of the author, I am always skeptical. However Christian Rummel as the narrator sold me on this title. I am expecting brutal battles with alien races, technological jargon, and an all over fun listen.

This was a very fast paced, straight forward, good old space military adventure. Our hero, Colonel Nathan Pretorius, is the one the military will send when they they think it is an impossible mission, a dead end, knowing that if anyone can pull it off it will be him. Here he gets to choose his team from non-military associations, which helps him immensely in the end.

He recruits his hand picked team of outlaws and they embark on an impossible mission to kidnap the leader of the “evil” alien warlords. Seems so simple, right? Well, even though they only had a 3% chance of a successful mission, it did seem very easy. Several games of cat and mouse, a few hit and runs and they are finally staring their prize in the face.

Full of colorful characters and alien races, think of Star Wars + Rambo + Ocean’s Eleven = The Fortress in Orion. If you are a lover of interesting and humorous dialog, this will be in your wheelhouse.

This was my first adventure by Resnick and I will be looking for more from him in the future as I need to have fun listening every now and again.

Christian Rummel was on point for this one. An audio technician of characterizations, some how creating the perfect voice of each and every one. You wouldn’t think that a man with such a deep and resonating “normal” voice would be able to create believable voices for the female characters. Rummel manages this with no audible effort what so ever.

I knew that I could count on Rummel for delivering a solid performance. He kept me engaged and waiting for whatever happens next.

Audiobook provided for review by the publisher. ( )