Deathstalker War Book

The Deathstalker series is a fast paced fun space opera in the Star Wars mould. It is not thought provoking sci-fi by any means but Simon R Green has an engaging writing style and despite using every sci-fi cliché in the book his story is still enjoyable and the characters even have a little depth to them!

This third third instalment of the series saw the rebellion in full swing. Owen and his allies continued the battle for key planets before taking the fight to the imperial capitol Golgatha itself for a final showdown with Empress Lionstone and her most loyal defenders.

The story started a little sluggishly but did settle back into the quality of the previous books in the mid to later stages. The battle for the key planets was a bit of a mixed bag. The action on Viramond and Golgatha was good but the stuff on Mistworld and Shannon's World was not quite as engaging. I'm not sure what went wrong on Mistborn as our previous visits there have all been quite exciting! I liked the idea behind the stuff on Shannon's World but felt we spent too long there and that we had no real investment in the enemies our heroes fought there which hurt that phase of the story a touch. The Deathstalker series is always at its best when it throws familiar characters against each other. That happened on Viramond and Golgatha and that is why I found those parts of the story the most exciting.

All in all I thought this was another decent entry into the Deathstalker series. We got a good conclusion to the rebellion vs the Empress story arc and the promise of more potential problems for Owen and the rest of our heroes in future instalments.

Rating: 3.5 stars. I'm rounding up to 4 here on Goodreads as this was closer to a 4 star read than a 3 star read for me.

Audio Note: The audio of this was produced by Listen & Live Audio who were the proto-Graphic Audio. It was very well done. The music and sound effects were done well and the narrators also did a great job with the characters.