Phoenix: Field of Mars

By: Jackie Anders

Narrated by: Lydell Storm

Twenty-eight-year-old Kyla Marshall has desires of advancing her career in public relations at all costs...until she ends up stumbling in on a special ops mission that takes her from her client’s lab in the year 2017 to AD 8 ancient Rome.

After learning her new reality, she discovers that the team’s mission is to stop a biochemical scientist from unleashing a deadly virus on the unsuspecting first-century people in order to change history.

As Kyla encounters hostility and strife on her journey, she is surprisingly protected by the team's leader, Capt. Christopher Eriksen. Even though Eriksen has many internal struggles from what he’s seen and done, he inspires her to trust in something bigger than herself.

But as Kyla and the team race to stop the impending genocide, Kyla’s biggest fear is no longer the known threat. It is the not knowing if she will ever be able to get back home.

©2019 Black Rose Writing (P)2019 Beacon Audiobooks

Narration is the worst I have heard

While the story is an interesting one, the book publisher needs to re-record this book. The narrator makes consistent errors in pronunciation, enunciation, and does not follow punctuation. His rendering of voices is grating on the listener and inconsistent with character sex and other demographics. Words that are mispronounced include but are hardly limited to: wool, senator, thyme, bodice, beguiled, idiosyncrasies, herbaceous,lithe, duvet, reprieve,
mien, hemorrhagic, Hebron, Phoenician, liaison
faux,polytheism, and taupe. The narrator and publisher’s incompetence make it impossible to focus on this interesting story. I get the sense that the narrator recorded this with zero competent oversight in one take with no care to quality. I will never listen to another book by this narrator and will exercise extreme caution when considering another book by this careless publisher.

Nice Idea, but wait It gets worse

Nice idea, but the story line got thin and at times trite. And why does a Norwegian sound like he is from Texas? The suspension of disbelief just didn’t happen.

Update: read the second book in the series and it got predictably worse. What original thoughts in the first book are replaced with real hackneyed writing that a super hero comic book would deliver.