Rats, Bats and Vats

Rats, Bats and Vats Series 1

By: Dave Freer, Eric Flint

Narrated by: James Fouhey

Chip Connolly was a conscripted grunt in trouble. Here he was, stuck behind enemy lines with a bunch of cyber-uplifted rats and bats. Rats with human speech, but with rat values. Rats that knew what was worth fighting for: sex, food, and strong drink.

True, they were holed up on a ruined wine-farm with enough brandy to swim in. Trouble was, there wasn't much food. And with shrew-metabolism the rats had to eat. He was next on the menu. The bats were no help: they were crazy revolutionaries planning to throw off the yoke of human enslavement with high explosive.

As if that wasn't bad enough, there was the girl they'd rescued. Rich. Beautiful. With a passionate crush on her heroic rescuer. She came with added extras: a screwball alien tutor, and a cyber-uplifted pet galagoa tiny little lemur-like-critter with a big mouth and delusions about being the worlds greatest lover.

So: he'd volunteered for a suicide mission. Of course things only got worse. The whole crew decided to come along. Seven rats, five bats, a galago, two humans, a sea-urchin-like alien and an elderly vineyard tractor without brakes...against several million inimical aliens. He was going to die. Mind you, not dying could be even more terrible. That girl might get him.

Contains mature themes.

©2000 Dave Freer and Eric Flint (P)2020 Tantor

Military sci-fi with a twist and a laugh

It's kinda sorta like any good military sci-fi. Except it's not.
It's also Eric Flint type satire -- this time, on the military "intelligence" and other stuff.
Twisted and fast-paced plot, tongue-in-cheek humor, great language.

As pleasurable to listen to as an old Radio space opera.

The original novel was written as a space opera, with a good balance of voice given to the characters, along with the somewhat irreverent narrative style, translates to a veritable treat as a spoken story, reminiscent of radio space operas.

Also, the narration was quite well done! He was able to do the voices and accents well enough to give the characters the life they had in the original written book.

The humor, the bodice ripping, and the action don’t hide the seriousness of the underlying themes surrounding the definition of self, sentience/sapience, self determination, liberty, and the nigh inevitable deterioration of artificial societies from lofty ideals to corruption due to the nature of human nature when provided such a disparity of power as in the story.

However one will think of that in between reading sessions, when the laughs trail off, and it gives an overall optimistic view, as humanity in all its forms is shown to be its own solution to the problem.

TLDR - it’s a treat to listen to, and a surprisingly accessible Sci fi novel for the concepts it tackles on the sides, while giving all the humor, action and satirical romance one could have.

Worth the listen!

love this series

it's a romp, through and through. sex, booze and explosions while fighting aliens. enjoy the ride

Great book (bad cover)

I read this book orriginally thanks in part to the cover. The cover for the audio book is horrible though! The book, however, is as great as ever!

I should note there is at least one or two short stories related to these books that are not in audio formate. They are short prequils and if you're interested look t hem up

Hmmmmmm

This has been a favorite book for many years, so I was delighted when an audio version became available. The performance is difficult to rate though. It was professionally done and shows effort. Yet I found myself disagreeing with many of the choices for vocal characterization. And those are plot important to the story.

As an example: the uplifted rats have Shakespearian downloads, so a British accent seems appropriate.....except due to their rat-like nature I expected a working class accent, rather than a precise (and rather posh) upper class one.

It seemed that almost all of the characters ended up with upper class British accents, which did not feel right to me. Yes, there are two distinct social classes, but if the vats speak like Americans, perhaps something like Bostonian Brahmin would have made more sense for the shareholders.

Still an excellent story.