Ares
Nomad, Book 1
By: K.A. Finn
Narrated by: Keith Michaelson
This is an audible book I requested and the review is voluntary.
I loved this book! Wow, I am hooked! I had listened to a later book but I needed to know the start and boy, it is amazing to know how all this started for Griffin. Wow. This is such a great sci-fi novel. Griff is taken as a 10 year old boy and experimented on and made into a cyborg. No one knows he is alive. All the others that is kidnapped and experimented on died, he is the only one that lived. Somehow he got away, his number is 35. It is so exciting. I don't want to say anything more about the book except that it is so exciting, lots of action, touch of romance, adventure, suspense, and a must read/listen.
The narrator was perfect! Wow, he does the women's voices so well, I was so surprised! Great job. ( )

Gryffin is the human/cyborg captain of the Nomad ship Ares. Here in the Outer Sector, Nomad and the Foundation fight for domination over the scattered colonies. Lt. Terra Rush serves on a Foundation ship, following in her father’s foot steps. However, when she crosses paths with Gryffin, her loyalties become divided. Gryffin has spent the last 20 years attempting to suppress his human nature, but his feelings start to unfurl once he meets Terra.

So, basically, this is Sons of Anarchy in space. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it does mean it’s a little predictable. Gryffin and the Nomads are basically outlaws, and look the stereotypical part with long hair, leather clothes, piercings, tattoos, etc. They make individual agreements with the settlements, providing protection for a place to set down when needed and favorable trade arrangements. Gryffin is the heir to the Nomad leadership, having pushed for more trade and less pirating. When traveling around on the surface of a planet, the Nomads have black, sleek motorcycles. Then there’s the Foundation, which represents law and order for the story. When a colony aligns with them, the Foundation makes all the rules and the settlement abides. Even some of the character names in this book are the same to characters in the TV show: Terra (the main love interest) and Clay (Gryffin’s second in command).

Once I got beyond the bikers in space idea, I was really intrigued by first Gryffin but then also the politics surrounding him (much of which he is unaware of until the end of the book). Gryffin was abducted as a teenager and spent some years being transformed into a partial cyborg before he was able to escape. Now in his mid 30s, he has a successful life with the Nomad which gives him purpose. However, some implant in his head is making him freak out more and more often and his crew has the injuries to show for it. For some reason, Gryffin can’t read. We never find out why and it bothered me a bit that it was never really explained. He was old enough to have some basic reading skills by the time he was abducted, so did one of those implants give him a reading disorder? Anyway, while it’s a small thing, the author could easily have taken 2 sentences to easily explain it. Gryffin’s illiteracy, his anger management issues, and brute strength made me picture him like a Conan the Barbarian in space. Though Conan got more play; Ares doesn’t allow women on board, believing they are bad luck. Snort.

Terra Rush started off as an interesting character. Her father is dead and her captain, Ramon, was his good friend. She sees Ramon as an uncle or perhaps surrogate father and he sometimes treats her as a daughter, watching out for her. She’s the newest member to the ship but still has a fair bit of training under her belt. She can put up a decent fight, is a fair shot, and can improvise as needed. However, once she meets Gryffin, she turns into a klutz and is repeatedly tripping, running into people, or falling into pits. Hence, Gryffin has several opportunities to rescue her. For much of the book, she’s the love interest and spends her energy in trying to puzzle out Gryffin and provide him some comfort. The sex scenes are non-existent, having some heavy kissing, close the curtain and time passes, and then how Terra feels afterwards. I would have enjoyed a bit more detail, but that’s me.😉 I was sad to see that Terra’s character didn’t develop further once she became the love interest.

There’s some interesting side characters. On the Foundation ship, there’s the ship’s Doctor, Mila (spelling?). She’s become a good friend to Terra and they often confide in one another about men and romance. However, Mila has this important, sometimes tense, job of doctor and that makes her more interesting. There’s also Ylena (spelling?), a leader of a settlement that the Foundation and the Nomad are currently duking it out over. She’s also somewhat of a friend to Gryffin, having known him for some years now. She has to walk this careful line, trying to keep not only the Nomad and the Foundation happy, but also nearby colonies. Chase is Gryffin’s personal aid and perhaps even a friend to Gryffin, though Gryffin prickles when anyone uses the word around him. Clay is definitely a bit more hard-nosed than Chase, often giving it to Gryffin straight and usually not backing down.

Then we get into the politics, which were pretty darn entertaining and interesting for much of the book. There’s the surface stand off between the Foundation and the Nomad. But then each side has their internal politics. On the Foundation side, there’s the super secret cyborg program of old that some active politicians and military leaders want to keep buried. So they are pulling strings from behind the curtain to try to capture or kill Gryffin. Ramon gets an unexpected entanglement concerning Gryffin that weighs heavily on his decisions regarding the Nomad throughout the book. This particular piece was very well done and I was thoroughly caught up in wondering how things would play out for Ramon. In the last quarter of the book, the politics get pretty muddy and convoluted as backstabbing, betrayals, and previously unknown allegiances come out. It felt a little rushed and a little more complicated than it had to be, but it also provided a ripe situation for everything to go wrong. And that provided a lot of tension for the ending, which I totally ate up and couldn’t put the book down. The story ends on a tense, even sad note. However, once I finish posting this review, I’m going to download Book 2 to see what happens next for Gryffin and Chase and Ramon and Mila. And perhaps Terra too, though I do hope she gets some real character development.

I received a copy at no cost from the author in exchange for an honest review.

The Narration: Keith Michaelson did a really good job. He gave Mila (the Foundation doctor) an Irish lilt, which was nice. He had gruff voices for the men when they were ticked off. His female voices were believable. He really brought the characters’s emotions to life. His native accent sometimes just barely slips into each character here and there but it’s a pleasant accent and doesn’t detract from the performance. ( )

My original Ares audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

Ares by K.A. Finn is the first book in a series called Nomad. Set in vicinity of a series of planets that the main government organization called the Foundation is trying to civilize, Griffin of the rebel group Nomad are insistent on keeping the colonies free of Foundation control and within Nomad protection. In addition to the Foundation trying to control these free planets, Griffin and the Nomad also have to contend with a rival rebel group called the Hunters. While he is the leader of the Nomad, Griffin must also fight himself for control of his own actions and feelings. Griffin is no ordinary man. He was kidnapped as a child and modified to be a cyborg: part human, part machine. Mind control implants in his head push him to extreme violence when Griffin is not in control of his mind. Right around the time that Griffin meets Foundation officer Terra Rush, everything in his life begins to spin out of control. Fighting himself and his feelings for Terra, he must find a way to keep the colonies under his protection and free from Foundation control.

This novel grew on me leaps and bounds and I was completely engrossed by the end. The plot is winding and there are a lot of moving parts, but they work together really well. The relationships between the characters are well thought out and not revealed until opportune moments with great effect. Some of these reveals/twists can be guessed, but others left my mouth hanging open! During the novel, however, some of the feelings between characters seem to grow intense abruptly. For example, the romance between Griffin and Terra is extremely abrupt – no reasoning, just deep love seemingly out of nowhere. While this definitely induces a few eye-rolls, once I was able to get past this, their romance was fun. I liked all of the characters and I understood their motivations for the actions that they take. They each have depth of experience guiding their actions. The end is exciting and there is a definite conclusion, while leaving so much more to be revealed as the story progresses in the next novels. I can’t wait to see what happens next!

The narration by Keith Michaelson was excellent. He really captures the tone of the characters. I liked the varied accents and the creepy voices left me cringing. He did an excellent job. The production quality was good as well. Something to keep in mind overall, the tense of the novel is in active. This took me off guard as apparently most of the books that I listen to either don’t use this tense or I don’t typically notice. It took me about an hour to put my finger on it, but it bothered me for a bit. However, I stopped noticing as the novel progressed and the plot became more complicated. I would recommend this novel to anyone who loves space based science fiction, outlaws, and fighting against the establishment.

Audiobook provided for review by the author. ( )