This book was good old fashioned, clean fun!! The MC was a spoiled rotten child of a great (rich) pirate. Within the first couple of chapters this boy was betrayed by the people he held most dear, nearly killed a few times over, ran afoul of gypsy cronies, and thrust into the very distinctly un-noble, gritty, thieving life in the underbelly of London's seedy streets. The character development as well as the world building were extremely well done and the very obvious PG rating did not at all detract from my enjoyment of the book. This is an excellent book for younger readers and especially for reluctant young boy readers since the MC is an easy to sympathize with young man who you can't help but root for in the end. The pace is quick and the writing is succinct. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

This book was good old fashioned, clean fun!! The MC was a spoiled rotten child of a great (rich) pirate. Within the first couple of chapters this boy was betrayed by the people he held most dear, nearly killed a few times over, ran afoul of gypsy cronies, and thrust into the very distinctly un-noble, gritty, thieving life in the underbelly of London's seedy streets. The character development as well as the world building were extremely well done and the very obvious PG rating did not at all detract from my enjoyment of the book. This is an excellent book for younger readers and especially for reluctant young boy readers since the MC is an easy to sympathize with young man who you can't help but root for in the end. The pace is quick and the writing is succinct. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Evan C. Currie is one of those (few) authors that almost never disappoints me. This book is no exception. This is a very good start of a new series in the Odyssey One universe. The book takes off not too far after the events in the last Odyssey One book. Actually, a lot of people will probably think of this one as “Odyssey One #5″. However, according to the author himself a fifth Odyssey One book is “Zero percent likely”. So this is obviously a new series.

Although we get a brief appearance of our well known hero Eric Weston, the main character in this book is, as the book blurb indicates, Captain Morgan Passer of the new (or is it old?) Rogue Class destroyer Autolycus. If you are wondering about the name of the ship you have to brush up on your Greek mythology (I had to). He is not the only one in the spotlight in this book though. There are several others, a female commander from what used to be the enemy and a marine commander who used to do his best to try and kill said enemy for instance. A half-crazy prima donna and genius scientist rounds off the ensemble creating some interesting personal chemistry issues.

So it is a whole new team that embarks on adventures in the same universe as Odyssey One. The Drasin have been repelled, for now, but they still lurk out there and the Autolycus is sent out scout for potential future dangers. As can be deduced from the book blurb they find quite a few things and that is not necessarily good news.

The book starts off like a scientific expedition, then turns into somewhat of a horror and suspense story to finally explode in quite a bit of action. Most of the action is marine grunt action and it is well done but I would have preferred a larger portion of ship action myself. Not that the Autolycus is left entirely out and the chief have to play around with various unstable compounds that you normally do not let loose on a space ship (or anywhere else for that matter) in order to save the ship.

Previously mentioned personal chemistry issues comes into play of course. I especially like the rather nutty science genius. The book is nicely written as usual from Evan C. Currie and it is a good mix of adventure, suspense, horror and action with almost entirely likable characters. Actually, I do not think there was any non-likable characters event though the science genius tried hard to be one. I especially liked the more or less total absence of stupid politics. Humanity have been standing on the edge of the eternal abyss and this time they appear to have learned their lesson…finally.

On the whole this is a very good book and a good start of a new series taking off where Odyssey One finished. Personally I would not have minded a bit more space action (I known the author is quite good at it) but it was still a very enjoyable book.

The conclusion of the latest Gambit series is fantastic - action, comedy and just plain fun. All the stuff that came before in the series sort of comes together in a pretty major climax.

 

And if I learned nothing else from reading it, I learned this - I would read a whole miniseries of Gambit and Pete Wisdom forced to partner up for the greater good. I would read it in a heartbeat.