Brimstone

Ascendant War, Book 2

By: Rhett C. Bruno, M.B. Vance

Narrated by: Ray Porter

The Ascendant Humans have conquered Earth and banished mankind to a distant star. There, the refugees war in space over the resources rationed to them. In an orbital habitat, Commander Rylan Shaw labors against the inter-colony arms trafficking when an informant gives him horrific news. The ruthless cartel boss, Lilith, has stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Worse, she has permission from the Wardens, humanity's robot overlords, to unleash them upon the system.

As the battleship Infinity speeds to investigate Rylan's discovery, her operations officer, Scott Carrick, soon finds himself in a trap more deadly than he could have ever imagined. To his dismay, he learns that his only hope of escape may lie with their most junior crewmember, a gentle nurse named Aila Omura.

As Rylan, Scott, and Aila struggle to survive a war where the rules keep changing, they must answer a terrible question: how do they win when it seems the Wardens intend for everyone to lose?

©2023 Rhett C. Bruno and M.B. Vance (P)2023 Recorded Books

Different book

Very different than the first book in this series, not sure I really liked the odd turn it took into super weird behaviors and such. I get it this is a book about a war but man for odd. Anyway, still deciding about book three our not

completely different style of voicing

Where did Scott suddenly get a horrible British accent and the same thing with a couple of other characters.

Also it is unnecessarily graphic rape stuff. I honestly think the writers need to see a phycologist and the police need to check their basement.

I don't think I will be buying anything else from them.

Graphic and in some ways unnecessary to a space opera.

Graphic about sexual
Assault and in some ways unnecessary to a space opera. At some times the content seemed repetitive. I did not feel this way about book 1. Still looking forward to book 3 next year.

Not a very compelling sequel for a lot of reasons

Rob Porter is still one of my favorite narrators and I enjoyed Book 1, but this sequel left me frustrated and wanting for so many reasons.

For one, somewhere in the process one of the main characters voices changed from being a regular American accent to an English one which completely throws you off. Note: this was also a slight issue in the first book which Scott starts out British and then shifts to American soon after. It felt like the publisher lacked oversight due to this blunder.

There are additional story choices which really frustrate including a sequence where the author describes in anguishing detail a bullet traveling through a body when he has never done so before in any of the other books or passages. it was just graphic and unnecessary and it seemed like a departure for him.

There's also a sequence in the middle of the book in which one of the characters ends up getting chased into a jungle by the mafia for something that has nothing to do with the major plot and, if it was an attempt to strengthen her character or to show just another angle of the world they were in, it really did nothing but frustrate me to have to listen to a sideplot. I ended up skipping ahead to get to the regular story again. So all in all not happy with the sequel. it's a bit like the tonal difference between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom. A lot more viscous and darker than the first. I am not sure I'll listen to the third when it comes out.