The Iron War

A Xander Cain Novel

By: P.W Hillard

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

It’s just a garrison job. What could go wrong? Xander Cain is one of the most infamous mercenaries in known space. Kicked out of his family’s company, he’s now a freelancer, the bottom rung of the mercenary ladder. All he has to his name is a few credits, his guild licence, and a battle-ready mech. Forced to take the jobs no one wants, Xander heads to the planet Hades to act as a garrison. It’s low paying, but low risk. A nice easy payday. Of course, things are never so simple in the Iron Belt. Xander finds himself under attack, forced to work with a rag-tag team of other mercenaries as they escort precious cargo through a warzone. Xander stumbles onto a conspiracy that threatens to plunge the Iron Belt into all-out war, battling sinister forces working under the flag of a black rose. His mission now is simple. Get to the space elevator and get off the planet. There’s just the small matter of the army of mechs in his way. Four mechs, a truck full of secrets, and a whole field of targets. An easy payday, indeed.

Missed potential

AI voice reading is awful. Makes dialogue awkward and uncanny, mispronounces words, and makes every missed typo all the more painful.
Both the text and audio clearly need one concerted read and listen that they clearly didn’t get- thorns/throne, weird/wired, all the things a spellcheck ignores but a human can’t. Certain things are repeated so many times it becomes obnoxious- you don’t need to explain that the mechs react to rider’s thought every single time it happens.
The POV jumps around in a jarring fashion- we shouldn’t get the thoughts and POVs of different characters, then whiplash back to only hearing Xander’s POV, and the robot voice makes this 10x worse. AI story beat starts abruptly and goes absolutely nowhere before the whole thing ends.
That said, author has potential, there is something worthwhile here especially for the price of free, but author should invest more time and effort in polishing these stories before putting them through an AI voice and moving on. Respect your work and other people will too.