The Eighth Artifact

By: David Collins

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The crew of the Stardust III plans to enter the portal and explore the source of the mysterious radio beacon in the M33 galaxy.

On their way there, they discover ships full of refugees fleeing one disaster, only to be heading into another.

Then, they are almost ready to enter the portal, when survivors, displaced from Earth, are discovered in a place where it is impossible for them to be.

Finally, fully equipped, well-armed, and with a small fleet of ships, they enter M33…Only to discover that not all answers are what you want to hear, and that one race is attacking the damaged ships…

When is Nine?

I reached Eight, just as it was released. Now I have to wait for each new one. I hate it when that happens. I wonder if there is a new EF Foner out yet?

Outstanding Series and Story arc in each book

No Spoilers, I loved all eight books so far in the series. I usually find that these large series devolve into repetitive storylines or characters doing irrational thing to drive the story at which point I usually loose interest. The first story had an original premise (which drew me in) and each subsequent title had a story arc that expanded on the theme without being repetitive. Some of what happens is a bit rapid or extraordinary especially in the context of it happening to the same set of individuals but not so far that you can't suspend belief as it keeps the main storyline from getting bogged down in the political, inter-species or other minutia. (I'm looking at you Star Wars prequel Trilogy). World building is good and character development is above par where the main characters and even some of the secondary characters developed personalities and without being predictable behave reasonably how you'd expect them to in situations given their characters and context of elements of the story that came before.

If I had any complaints (a nit pick really) it would be the Virtual voice. While it is good at reading the text of the story, It's inflection and pronunciation can be odd sometimes and I found myself rewinding to figure out what just happened or who did or said what. It doesn't help that one of the character's name sound like the pronoun "me" and they are often part of or the subject of conversation. Some ebooks which I really liked have had different actors voice different characters and while I understand that may not be economically feasible for most titles, Altering Virtual Voice to read the text with different Inflection, Timbre, and/or (mild) Accents consistent with the characters might improve how this is perceived.

Overall I found both each title and the series as a whole engaging and hope the author continues to expand the series with new adventures in a similar vein.