
On the outer edge of the solar system, the first manned mission to Pluto, led by the youngest female astronaut in NASA history, has led to an historic discovery: there is a marker left there by an alien race for humankind to find. We are not alone!
While studying the alien marker, it begins to react and, four hours later, the missing asteroid appears in a Plutonian orbit, along with young Alex Manez, who has developed some alarming side-effects from his exposure to the kinetic element they call Kinemet.
From the depths of a criminal empire based on Luna, an expatriate seizes the opportunity to wrest control of outer space, and takes swift action.
The secret to faster-than-light speed is up for grabs, and the race for interstellar space begins!
Review
I'd like to first point out that the noise when a chapter changes, it needs to be shot and taken out of MY misery.
The story itself was interesting. It has a whole heck of a lot of characters, but they aren't difficult to keep up with. You know who does what and why.
For the most part, the narration is pretty good. He's good at keeping the characters separate with different voices. Although there are a couple characters that I shuddered at his interpretation of them. One, I will admit is a bias of mine. I cannot stand when adults do children's voices. It's the equivalent of raking nails on a chalkboard in my head. Then there are his Asian characters. Ever see those movies around World War 2 when they had white people playing the bad Japanese guy? That's what it sounded like. I felt like I needed to apologize for listening to it.
Although a bit repetitious and a little difficult to keep up with at times, the story was captivating enough that it held my interest. Although the audio version I have contains all three books, even if I didn't already have book 2 I would have been interested in continuing.