Undead Marine

By: J.N. Chaney, Jonathan P. Brazee

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

From Book 1: Killed in action. Reborn on the battlefield.

Sergeant Paxton Alejo is a League of Humanity Marine Commando, the best of the best. After getting sent to oversee a batch of fresh conscripts, Pax makes the fateful decision to sacrifice his life to save his subordinates. He is posthumously awarded the Cross of Honor, the highest military medal . . .

. . . except that the Marine Corps isn’t done with him.

Using highly classified, experimental technology, his deceased body is transported to a top secret facility and infected with a genetically modified mycelium that can imprint on his brain, creating a biological download, ultimately preserving most of his memories and combat skills.

Despite being labeled legally dead, he wakes and feels alive.

He has no rights. He is no longer a citizen. Instead, he’s government property, part of a clandestine unit made up of the finest spec ops Marines, soldiers, and sailors, each one deceased. . .

. . . and all with capabilities too valuable to lose.

The military’s new goal is to create the finest combat force ever conceived, capable of bringing back the best of the best, no longer bound or constrained by death itself.

With enemies on the battlefield and at home, and with no real rights to his name, Pax and his fellows will struggle to survive in a universe built only for the living.

©2024 Variant Publications (P)2024 Variant Publications

Great sci-fi, Top notch reader

Good actio sequences, and an interesting story that is well performed audio by Roger Wayne.

The narration

I honestly think I could see this being a good show on Netflix. With the Narrator I could definitely see Sam Worthington playing as Pax. It’s an interesting concept and I love the way it’s implemented.

Great story

Really enjoy the details in this story. Some of the military explanations are truly interesting. Not sure the narrator brings this story to life as much as he should.

Eh

I dunno. If it's sci-fi with technology indistinguishable from magic, or fantasy with literal magic, I can get over some of the mandatory Modern Audience checkboxes. But when you have military fiction, and these elite undead marines where like half of them are women, it breaks the suspension of disbelief completely, and through that break it poisons everything else in the narrative as well. If these guys have women in their team, it's simply impossible for them to be badass or cool. Also, apparently they dicks don't work anymore. I don't know why I needed to have that pointed out to me, but I guess when you make them spend all their time rubbing shoulders with women, the topic of why they're not having any sex is bound to come up. So now all these characters are, by their own dead-life cherry-popping standards, canonically virgins. The reader needs to know this about them.

Solid military sci-fi with interesting concept

All around an enjoyable story about a new military program to reanimate dead spec ops warriors to curb the accelerating losses of well-trained fighters during a long and costly war. I like the concept, and the execution comes without complaints. However, beyond the reanimation there weren't any other hooks or twists to the story to make it exceptional.