Backyard Starship (Book 1) - by J.N. Chaney (Author), Terry Maggert (Author)

[markav2]

Starting a new series today, Backyard Starship (Book 1) - by J.N. Chaney (Author), Terry Maggert (Author)

I will be listening to them from audible and it looks like there are at least 12 books right now and 13 is on prerelease. Has anyone started listening to this series yet?

 

[Steve]

I started reading the first book some time ago.
It didn't hook me, though I don't clearly recall why.
I don't think I finished that first one. FWIW.

 

[markav2]

@Steve

I only made it to chapter 10, which wasn't keeping my interest.

I moved on to Wayward Galaxy series by Jason Anspach, J.N. Chaney, and I am much happier with this choice. Will be starting book 3 tomorrow.

 

[DrBunsen]

@Steve @markav2

I *loved* listening to Wayward Galaxy (Brody is hilarious), but I stopped listening to the series until I get all the books on Audible, at which time I'll start over again and enjoy the ride. I've never been in the military, but the depictions of on-the-ground battle, and the inter-squad communications during combat felt/sounded like I would imagine. I saw some reviews for the later books in the series that said that it didn't hold up, but even if it fades it'll probably be worth it to me.

Strangely enough, it was because I enjoyed Wayward Galaxy so much that I got Backyard Starship, since it was co-authored by J.N. Chaney, but like y'all I was disappointed with it. As I recall, I kinda liked the story outline, but not the actual writing. As with a lot of SciFi, there were too many times when I thought "that bit of action didn't seem plausible", and "that's not how a real conversion would go."

 

[markav2]

@Steve @markav2

I *loved* listening to Wayward Galaxy (Brody is hilarious), but I stopped listening to the series until I get all the books on Audible, at which time I'll start over again and enjoy the ride. I've never been in the military, but the depictions of on-the-ground battle, and the inter-squad communications during combat felt/sounded like I would imagine. I saw some reviews for the later books in the series that said that it didn't hold up, but even if it fades it'll probably be worth it to me.

Strangely enough, it was because I enjoyed Wayward Galaxy so much that I got Backyard Starship, since it was co-authored by J.N. Chaney, but like y'all I was disappointed with it. As I recall, I kinda liked the story outline, but not the actual writing. As with a lot of SciFi, there were too many times when I thought "that bit of action didn't seem plausible", and "that's not how a real conversion would go."

@DrBunsen

I have six Wayward Galaxy audiobooks in my library, I think that's all there is for now.

 

[LiteReader]

Starting a new series today, Backyard Starship (Book 1) - by J.N. Chaney (Author), Terry Maggert (Author)

I will be listening to them from audible and it looks like there are at least 12 books right now and 13 is on prerelease. Has anyone started listening to this series yet?

@Steve @markav2

I've been reading them since the summer. I will admit, the first couple of books (maybe even three or four) had me feeling something was lacking... I couldn't quite put my finger on it though. Maybe it was how things seemed to always go as planned... he'd outline the bad things could happen... but they never did. I will say, they read, to me, like a TV series (by now, I REALLY want to see the TV Series!) Each book could have been 5 or 6 episodes. But the prior series I was reading was getting annoying (Lost Starship series - one of my peeves - the author never fully named the main character, "Maddox" - was that his first name or last name? Even his eventual wife just called him Maddox... but I digress) so I picked up this one.

Anyway, I kept reading and by the 7th or 8th, I'm thoroughly hooked. To me, I didn't feel the first books were bad, but they weren't 5 star worthy and I have a tendency to really give stories and characters a chance. (I've slogged through multiple seasons of a TV series that I wasn't crazy about until it got absolutely amazing - I hated the first couple season of the Magicians, but the third and fourth I absolutely loved! King Margot!) I liked that the main character returned to earth periodically, I like the banter the crew had with each other (the sarcasm, the movie and TV references, even the tech references). Again, not perfect, but I'm eagerly reading book 17 now. If I'm being honest, as an IT guy, I can relate to the main character and that's probably what keep me going even though the first few books were just good and not great.

I don't remember the book it was in, but I think what finally sealed it for me was the exchange between the characters that culminated in "Let's just say there's a certain corpse to water ratio that's acceptable, and no, I don't know what is is. But I know when it's been exceeded, and... yeah, this definitely exceeds it."

Anyway, at this point, I strongly recommend sticking with it. To me, it gets really fun, it's an easy read, the authors do a descent job of keeping things organized, sometimes picking up story lines and characters that were left off several books ago and rarely contradicting themselves in a way significant enough to annoy me. If you're looking for a great masterpiece that will soon be taught in english class, this isn't it. If you're looking for a fun read and have an appreciation for sarcasm, good guy comradery, that does occasionally experience "real life" (a couple of characters do die at points... maybe more), then stick with it, I think you'll enjoy.

 

[DrBunsen]

@DrBunsen

I have six Wayward Galaxy audiobooks in my library, I think that's all there is for now.

I'm just missing the 6th one, and am hoping to catch it on sale sometime soon. I'm currently finishing up the 9th (and last) book of the Rho Agenda series (which is a trilogy of trilogies), which it's pretty good, but don't take that to mean that I'm recommending it. (Note: The 6th book - Wormhole - was quite good, but the rest have been mostly "pretty OK".) There's too much "so and so is the best of the best at such and such", and "we broke into uncontrollable laughter that lasted more than a minute", and "so and so immediately formed beads of sweat on his forehead". I have never experienced, nor seen anyone experience, immediate beads of sweat within seconds of encountering a stressful situation, let alone it happening a dozen times or more; I don't recall multiple situations of uncontrollable laughter that went on and on for a minute or more; and the chances that so many situations would happen to include the very best person in the entire human race for that particular need, isn't very likely at all. That kind of unnecessary hyperbole distracts me from the flow of the story.

I know that Wayward Galaxy had its moments of hyperbole as well, but for some reason I was much more forgiving of it, and I'm not entirely sure why.

 

[Scott_H]

I started reading the Backyard Starship series a couple of months ago, and I'm hooked. Think of Star Trek TOS, only with a much smaller ship. It's one part science fiction, one part crime/mystery, and one part snappy banter.

Here's an example of the latter that gives nothing away. To set this up, understand that "Icky" (short for Icrul) is the ship's engineer, described as a four-armed, female gorilla, and Funboy, the ship's doctor, is a skinny alien germaphobe. Because she is fur-covered, Icky often complains about the requirement to wear clothing in more formal settings. Zeno is the weapons officer and something of an adoptive mother to Icky. Perry is a sharp-tongued combat AI. The protagonist, Van, our first-person story teller, also weighs in. They've just discovered a tracking device attached to the ship.

“Creeps me out a little knowing someone’s watching us,” Icky muttered.
Zeno glanced at her. “Why? It’s not like it’s looking into your cabin.”
Perry’s eyes flashed. “Trust me, Icky, no one wants to see that.”
She bristled, but I held up a hand. “Icky, you don’t wear pants. So what, exactly, are you afraid of someone seeing that you don’t kind of broadcast all the time anyway?” “
I have my intimate moments. Like when I clean my—”
Funboy cut her off. “There is absolutely no completion to that sentence that I am interested in hearing, thank you very much.”

I've binged through quite a few series, and this one is quite entertaining and available with Amazon Kindle Unlimited.