The Last Engineer

Darrk World, Book 1

By: Russell E. Van Dyke

Narrated by: Peter Leppard

A battle cruiser is forced to engage its star drive to keep from being destroyed at the end of a battle, not knowing where they will end up. Damaged and ending up in Earth’s solar system, with no communication with their home world and no parts, they have to wait until the Earth’s technology advances enough to help them.

Then, far from the world of Darrk, it’s up to the last engineer to repair the ship and get them home. But after being on Earth for so long, Rahm, the last engineer, now has family here on Earth. Repairing the ship means they will bring the fleet back and bring about Earth’s destruction and enslavement. He cannot let that happen.

With other like-minded Darrks and a group of human and part-Darrk offspring, they have to prevent a newly trained engineer and the old political officer from completing the repairs and bringing about the end of a planet they have grown to love.

©2020 Russell E. Van Dyke (P)2020 Russell E. Van Dyke

Marooned Aliens with Special Qualities

This is a story about marooned aliens who have lived through humanity’s recorded history and their inner faction struggle to protect humanity or return home which could spell destruction for earth. These aliens have a unique combination of aspects from vampire, werewolf, and superman lore. For the first in a series, this book focuses mainly on character and world-building. While only giving us small bites of conflict to keep the story moving. All this is acceptable and well done for the beginning of a multi-book series but not for a standalone read. This is an entertaining read, but the true conflict makes no sense to me. Why return to your home planet far across the universe 8,900 years later? The risk to reward ratio does not make sense. If you go back to the home planet, everyone you ever knew would be dead, the political body most likely has been overthrown, and the planet might not even exist. Were as you remain on earth and have power, wealth, and magic powers? Keeping that in mind the character's relatability, realism, and interactions will have me reading the next book in this series.

The narration by Peter Leppard was skillful and flawless. He shows his voice acting skills by conveying the characters' emotions perfectly. The only shortcoming this performance has is the lack of spacing in between scenes mid-chapter.

Editing, quality, and production were on par with most books I have listened to. It was clear, there was no issue with sound or quality.

Disclaimer: This Audiobook was provided free of charge by the author, narrator, and/or publisher in exchange for a non-bias, honest review.

Wonderful book, brilliant narration

Thoroughly enjoyed the gripping story. The plot line leaves with hanging on to each chapter. The narrator of the book does a fantastic job bringing each of the characters alive in such a way that you can imagine them vividly as you listen. Very well done.

Not as advertised

This book advertises itself as a sci-fi; lost aliens surviving on earth until their last living engineer can repair their ship and return home, what it actually is, is a different take on vampires. the aliens can live forever (unless their heads are cut off) by sleeping for years in a sarcophagus, they require a particular enzyme to survive that can only be found in human blood, so yeah vampires!

The writing is most definitely from a first-time writer and as expected somewhat weak and a little pedestrian to say the least.

The story is interesting as it moves along but definitely not sci-fi, it's fantasy. So if your looking for a vampire book this can be an enjoyable light listen, But if you looking for true sci-fi look somewhere else.