First Strike

Grass Eaters, Book 1

By: Archer Spool

Narrated by: JJ Hawkins

Fast-paced space fleet action fought beyond the range of claws by cold, calculating warriors with nerves of steel.

When massive civilizations clash in interstellar war, nobody expected a prey species with blunt teeth, soft hides, and no natural hunting instincts to be a threat in a galaxy teeming with predators. After all, how could fast breeding, mastery of agricultural logistics, and permanent existential paranoia possibly constitute a military advantage?!

As a rabid species of Grass Eaters rises to the apex of the galactic food chain...and begins to ruthlessly exterminate their peaceful predator-origin neighbors, the carnivores could only watch as their proud fleets collapse, one after another, under the overwhelming weight and experience of the psychotic invading enemy.

Some await extinction, others execution. Hopeless.

But out there in the dark, someone else is watching. An undiscovered species, observing the slaughter with great concern, arguing amongst themselves about what to do, even as the frontline inches towards its home. Odd creatures with an unusual diet of both meat and grass.

Humanity must make its choice.

©2024 Archer Spool (P)2024 Tantor Media

Good Story! Not so good Narrator...

The story itself is solid, bit of a slow start but not horrible. Interesting scifi setting without getting too into the weeds with hard scifi rules, a good balance in my opinion. Aliens are a bit uncreative being just space bunny, space doggo, space bear, space cats, but faaaar better than the generic human but with some extra feature to distinguish them as an alien race. Not super complex for a scifi military story, but doesn't have to be to be enjoyable.

What I absolutely cannot forgive is the narrator. I genuinely would have preferred a text to speech program narrating this book. Not to say they didn't try, but this book was genuinely a bad fit, way too many characters for someone who can only do a few voices. Several times I caught them noticeable doing a sharp inhale into the microphone, which I've rarely heard from narrators on audible. Even then! All of that, I could have forgiven and just said meh not the best but better than I could have done. The one thing, I absolutely cannot and will not forgive. THE VOICES DON'T MATCH THE CHARACTERS. The space bunnies should be higher and squeaky, not the rough growl they use on most of them, similar with the doggos. The space bears should have voices to match. But it's the giving big deep voices to the space bunnies that really killed it, broke my immersion and made me laugh. Fingers crossed the narrator improves. Also the way they pronounce Terran, I have never heard a single person ever pronounce it the way the narrator does, not a big deal but also threw me off.

Enjoyable and fun.

Great setting and story. The narrator was a bit shaky at first, but quickly settled into it and did well.