Void Drifter

Void Drifter, Book 1

By: Jason Anspach, J.N. Chaney

Narrated by: Mark Boyett

Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

The Amazon rainforest holds a world-changing secret—a ship lost to time from another world.

College student Will Kaufman unearthed the biggest archaeological discovery in human history… he just needs to find a way back to Earth to tell people about it.

Four thousand years ago, a Federation bounty hunter Void ship crashed on a remote and primitive planet. There it remained until Will found it and accidentally reactivated it, launching him light-years away.

With the crew—and its prisoners—awakened from cryo-sleep, Will has no choice but to go along with Captain Fera and her pilot-turned-holographic AI. Seen as a naïve primitive, Will must navigate complex alien cultures, explore the far reaches of the galaxy, and battle a tyrannical empire seeking to finish off a haggard and weary rebel faction just to be granted a ticket back to Earth.

As Will shows an uncanny ability to navigate the mysterious realm of wormhole travel known as the Void, he begins to thrive in a galaxy not meant for humans.

Home is only a half-million light-years away, but when life on a spaceship is this much fun… does Will really want to go back?

©2023 Jason Anspach & JN Chaney (P)2024 Podium Audio

Excellent performance!

Once again, Anspach & Cheney knock it out of the park, again! Mark Boyette performs as he always does - superbly. Void Drifting as an a better alternative to FTL threw me for a minute, but I got used to it. I can’t wait for book 2!

A SciFi adventure movie.

basically this is Indiana Jones, A New Hope, and Mass Effect all smashed into a single book with ideas and races different enough to feel fresh and new. I didn't hate any of the characters and our MC isn't an idiot or a coward. he's a can do guy with latent leadership skills. the gun fights are exciting and visceral. the stakes are high and the cast is likeable. good narration as well.

Outstanding Book one - Excited for next one.

I don't write very many reviews. when I do there's a reason. exceptionally good and draws you into the story. this series is destined to be awesome

Hell Yeah!!!

Another Awesome series by these 2 greats. Mark Boyett made it come to life. I am waiting on tge rest of the books Thanks you 3.

Jason Anspach does it again

Anspach and company deliver another fantastic sci fi adventure and I pre-ordered book 2 about 3 hours in. If the authors see this, thank you for giving former star wars nerds like me a home. keep up the great work

fabulous

non stop action aka no rest for the wherry I will be waiting for the 2nd book to come out
love this story

where do I start?

I was hoping for a good story. Well, gentlemen, you certainly set the hook right for THIS fish! I’ll be standing in line for the whole series. Maybe not all on Audible (although this narrator seems to have mastered the talent of making truly different voices for each character), but I WILL read/hear them all!

The Turtle is awesome

Great story original as far as I know. But the Turtle is by far my favorite character! Give him a melee weapon!!

Ok. Too much Moral Grandstanding

Fair warning, some examples may be used from the story so spoiler warning!

This is an okay story, but it comes with some of the usual not so good found ship/abducted into space tropes. Starting with the usual suspect of the MC treating aliens as humans and getting away with it because the godauthor(s) force it to be okay. Especially if one of the alien characters "appears" human as in their physical appearance- head, two arms, two legs can pass for human minus some differences such as skin color, eye color, tattoos on face, long ears, horns, etc. So, you get a lot of that in this among other things. To be fair, the authors do introduce non-human-like aliens, but still have them roughly act human all the way down to speech and idioms. There's, of course, throw away lines that this is all in the translation, but even then there's almost nothing lost in translation unless the authors want to take a detour and get into that. It's not a big deal, but I bring it up because it bleeds into the thing that I felt was a big deal.

MC's moral grand standing. First, I should say that when the story really gets going which unfortunately is somewhere in the late mid to later chapters, the authors move away from MC doing this, BUT when the action scenes start up (shooting and such) MC starts this. I admit, the first time he does it, I paused the story for a day. Let me explain without giving too much away. MC finds a ship. The ship has prisoners on it. The ship takes off with MC in it. A prisoner, we'll call him TurtleWarrior, gets free. TurtleWarrior is from a warrior race that is totally warriorish and lives to fight wars and believes in honor killing fallen warriors after a battle. That part is important. MC is also an post-grad archaeologist who has enough education to know that some beliefs are just ingrained in a society of people and even in our history we have some questionable societies with questionable beliefs. Ok. Groundwork laid for me to get to the point. MC and, we'll call her BlueLady, finds TurtleWarrior. They have a shootout with some other TurtleWarriorPeople. One of them gets wounded. TurtleWarrior and BadTurtileWarriorGuy decide that the bad one is wounded and it would be honorable to pretty much mercy kill him on the battlefield so that he can die with honor. This is the equivalent of anyone with a religious belief wanting to go out in accordance with their beliefs so that they go on to live eternal life in accordance with their beliefs. Think Vikings and Valhalla and other similar things.

So, case and point, TurtleWarrior goes to honor kill the other one. MC just can't let this happen because you know he's morally better than everyone. He's an archaeologist, I remind you. He even acknowledges now and later that the TurtleWarrior people see warriorness and combat and hostility and all that as pretty much equivalent to religious belief. And yet, he just has to stop him. He has to moral grandstand. He has to preach about how "[He] can't be part of that." I was fine with all that, but what pissed me off is when BlueLady (who obvsiously agreed with him but understood it way better since she's also an alien) gave him an avenue to NOT PARTICIPATE by saying that they'd go back to the ship while TurtleWarrior and BadTurtleWarrior did their thing. That wasn't good enough. MC had to go back and preach to TurtleWarrior. What further bothered me is that even when he saw he was pissing him off. Even when he heard the Bad one pleading that he didn't want mercy. Even when all of this was telling him that he was sticking his nose in something that he had no idea what it was other than to moral grand stand, he kept going and kept running his mouth and only got away with it cause godauthor(s) forced TurtleWarrior to listen and consider MC's argument which was that TurtleWarrior could leave the other one alive to fight another day.

I'd have been okay if that was the only time, but he kept doing it at times where I thought he should've shut up. And don't get me wrong. I'm not pro-Euthanasia nor am I pro-Abortion (don't get all triggered about that, I'm just saying it to point out that I'm not pro-Honor killing) but this goes back to me pointing out that this is another one of those humans accidentally in space stories where the humans treat other beings as human...even when the aliens are insulting him that he's trying to bring human softness into what they believe. But as I said, he kept doing it. Later when they're in a fire fight, he wants to get upset that BlueLady tells him that it'd be better to kill what could amount to a dangerous threat for their side instead of waste time trying to capture them. MC, as usual for moral grandstanders, ignores the danger he'd want to put his people in just to make himself feel better that he, in his own words, "isn't being callous about combat."

Part of the problem is MC, aside from the handful of combat engagements he's had in the story, has no combat experience. Even when the experienced fighters are telling him to shut up and that he's trying to forgo mission goals to go make himself feel better about saving other trained combatants who volunteered to fight and die at certain points in the mission and will jeopardize the whole mission, he's complaining in his head and think's he's right until he finally gives in at the point that I said and stops moral grandstanding. But this brings me to my other issue....he constantly thought he was right about everything, he constantly never listened to the reason of those who knew better. He lacked significant humility to just shut up, observe the situation, figure things out, or pick the right time to bombard everyone with questions.

With all of that said. I finished the story. I enjoyed it when the plot finally got rolling. MC is not the only character I got annoyed with, but as usual with first person POV, he's the character who's head we're trapped in so his flaws are exacerbated. But the plot is not anything significantly new for space operas and military sci-fi. Big bad space group versus rag tag duct taped together space group. MC and cast are of course in one ship that's the only ship that can save the day. When it gets to all of that, was fun to listen to as MC stopped asking a hundred thousand questions to build exposition and, for the most part had stopped moral grandstanding.

Your mileage may vary.

The academic is going to teach the warriors to be humane

The story is entertaining enough, though there is really nothing new here. I did get tired of the main character always questioning the humanity of the actions of those around him. It was actually pretty hypocritical, as when it became his time to be aggressive and kill bad guys he did so with gusto. But then he’d turn around and question the actions of everyone else. I guess the author is trying to teach us readers some lesson, but the execution of that messaging is pretty poorly done.