Somebody noted in one of the reviews that all his characters "grimace" or "nod" or "scowl" or "snort" all the time. Even is repeating this so much that you can't ignore that. It's annoying.

I guess this is one of the problems of publishing your books yourself, you don't get an editor to go over the text and suggest improvements, force you to delete entire paragraphs and rewrite others.

The Gaia stuff at the end also lowers the target audience age group a little bit. I was going to read the 4th book, but I am not looking forward to find a captain planet episode disguised as a military scifi book.

Apart from those problems the book is great. The size of the battle is so much surpassing the first 2 books that I'd say it has a certain greatness, it's majestic. And of course, just like the other books, the action does not stop for a second.

It again makes sense in the context of the setup and story laid out by the first books. Evan is planning his story very well. He is even introducing some elements well ahead of time and builds upon them later to create a very credible narrative. I usually hate it when the SciFi authors can't even stay coherent inside their own "reality" elements. Evan does. I have no idea if an of the physics described in the book is to any degree scientifically correct. But if you accept the key concepts, then the rest of the book makes total sense in this context created by those physics laws.

Not that being scientific was one of his goals. The goal is to create a fast paced continuous action novel. The 3rd one in a row, and amazingly not one bit worse that the first two. On the contrary, some people seem to say in the reviews that it's better than those.

You cannot stay unimpressed by this. He is self published, selling his books on Amazon and here you have 3000 people most of them commenting they loved the book. 84% of them rated it 4 or 5 stars. 3% rated it 1 or 2 stars. That's something, isn't it?

Well, I liked it too. And I'll go read the 4th one. There are hundreds of drone ships in Earth's orbit, I have to know what happens... ( )

By the midway point I was absolutely certain that I was loving this one best out of the three novels, but that was only because I appreciated the new direction it was taking, sliding easily between a cat and mouse tale, a good chase, and solid warfare tactics and strategy. I've said a lot about the good characterizations, and that remains and is possibly improved upon, here, but I can add another great feature to the series.

The world-building is only getting better. :) Sometimes I look forward to a good exposition. Isn't that odd? Well I do. I like to know how things work, whether it's the tech, the political situations, or anything else that has direct impact upon the tale. We've got a lot more of that in this one, and I'm immensely grateful for it. It rounds out all the ever-increasing action and characters in a very familiar and succinct way, building nicely upon the already heavily-embedded "natural" world-building.

But what about the second half?

Oh my. Guess who's homeworld the title refers to? Yup. Ours. And we're in for a mighty shitstorm. This is the kind of classic SF we're used to, of course, but the storytelling is quite modern and quite fun, and I have nothing but great things to say about the surprising and grand ways we make it through.

Even the last reveals seem quite natural because we've already had quite a bit of introduction to it in the way of Central. :)

Poor Odyssey. I do so wonder if she'll get reconditioned in time for book four? *sigh* :) ( )

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge's Exalted Permission. Title: Homeworld Series: Odyssey One Author: Evan Currie Rating: 4 of 5 Stars Genre: SFF Pages: 507 Synopsis: The other Political Bloc on Earth has created their own FTL ship and sent it off to explore an earth like planet. Said spaceship runs into the Drasin and leads them to Earth. It is now up to the Odyssey and its crew to save the Earth. If that is even possible against 2,000 Drasin ships. My Thoughts: Bloody fantastic. And spoilers galore. This was pretty much one ginormous battle. We see the handlers of the Drasin for the first time and we see how the Drasin are being controlled, or not. Horrific really. Sentients sure are stupid, thinking they can control things that they really can't. The battle for Earth was awesome. Humanity pulling moves out of its collective butt and doing things that no other race has tried, and succeeding. Which made the ending all the more poignant. If you've ever watched Titan, A.E., you know how this book ends. Or at least that is the impression the author gives. Earth falls, a remnant of humanity taking refuge with the Priminae and hope splutters out like a candle under a bucketful of water. I am really looking forward to the final book in this series [even though there is another series Currie has started that takes place after this one and that series starts with King of Thieves]. " ( )

I'm almost certain that the word "grimaced" is used more frequently than the principle character's name. I'm not even joking. When they're not grimacing everywhere, they're scowling, glowering and snorting. Every conversation with a snort is defused when the more powerful participant chuckles. It's like a nursery book of simple emotions, left on the pile of magazines at a doctor's office and with most of the pages missing.

It's so full of this language, I'm tempted to download an epub if I can find one free, simply so I can run a few scripts against it. grep -c "(grimac(e|ed|ing)|scow(l|led|ling))", you know. Oh yes, and I find it disconcerting when two people are talking and one refers to the other as his erstwhile friend. Did I miss some falling-out? Does that word's meaning change over the next couple of hundred years? Who dares to dream?

The story (for all that happens, it's mostly maneuvering) is OK. It's not good. I don't care about any of the characters, even the ones who had more development in earlier books. The first couple of chapters gave me hope that this time there was a more interesting plot and that the book had maybe seen better attention from an editor.

It's not boring, exactly. If you skip over all the duplication, anyway. Because every time someone says something or some new information appears, another character will find a way to paraphrase it immediately, just so we're sure we understand.

I remember how in the first book the crew of this futuristic spaceship were getting used to using a touch interface, since this is clearly an alternate universe where iPods never happened. It's the same universe however, where people take mind-controlled space fighters for granted. That kind of disconnect is still here.

I've read the first one and listened to the next one on audiobook. I'm not sure why. I didn't finish this one and won't be getting any more sequels. I hope Currie keeps writing and other people get some enjoyment from it, because the world could do with more epic military SF and I don't want the genre to die out. But I mostly hope that we get some better authors.

Oh, and it's got a prologue. I have no idea why. It's chaptered and the prologue is just chapter 1 of the B-storyline. Now that's just weird. ( )

Homeworld Odyssey One (Book 3) by Evan Currie. This book takes place shortly after the events chronicled in The Heart of the Matter Odyssey One (Book 2). That book ended with the main character intending to have a conversation with the entity known as Central, the planetary mind on Ranquil. That conversation either does not happen or is never gets mentioned in Homeworld. Central has very little to say in Homeworld. What does happen in Homeworld is the telling of the story of how The Drasin and their masters follow a Chinese starship back to Earth and how the defenders of Earth make their stand. Readers who love intense detailed descriptions of desperately fought space battles will be extremely satisfied. The book does deliver some character development in that the reader gets insight into the mind and motivations of the Drasin, and their tenuous relationship with their unnamed masters The Priminae who have been presented as pacifist with in ability to fight effectively are presented in a better light this book when compared to the prior two books. Overall I was satisfied with this book when I view it in the light of other military science fiction books. The book is strong on excitement. Strong on space battles. But the story and the series as a whole is incredibly weak on character development and insight into the politics of the matter. This seems to be the weakness of military science fiction as a whole. ( )