We are so happy to announce that The Bonds of Orion went live on Amazon last night!
It is available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077F2NY9D
Thank you all for sticking with us during the long bumpy road to getting this book published! Your support is appreciated more than we can say!
Owen & Jordan
That’s a really tough question! I’d probably need to re-read carefully to truly decide and I’m not sure I could answer that even then.
But going by memory –
Book 1 I think felt a bit like “getting into things”. So maybe not that.
Book 2 and 3 felt the most well-rounded of the series to me. They are pretty long, there’s war going on, there’s some personal stuff and some “daily life” scenes, and of course there’s also Kris doing crazy things. I think it has to be either of them. I really can’t decide though. Maybe by a fraction book 3? Hrrrrm. But there’s also good arguments for book 2. Hum. Well. Let’s stick with book 3.
Book 4 and 5 with that “split” part 1/part 2 just structure didn’t quite work for me. If it were about book halves, I’d probably pick the 2nd half of book 4. There’s a tough battle that was believable, most of the fun characters were around, not too much Rafe, some hints at Kris’ background (or at least I read it that way…) and also maybe some Kris character development. But it’s not about book halves, so… 😉
Thanks very much! Those insights are much appreciated. Looking back, we do feel that the fourth book could be have been handled differently, which might have helped the flow and made it available sooner.
Happy to hear what you say about the second half of the fourth book. Mind if we ask which are the fun characters you refer to?
I’m bad with names, but I’ll try –
Vasquez really grew on me during that novel. This mix of though killer and a bit of nerd and all that; that was great. Probably my favorite character after Kris for that novel (incidentally shouldn’t Kris now always have someone following her around? There was some mention that an orderly is part of her rank or something and it doesn’t come up in book 5…).
Minerva is usually a bit too flippant for me (I’m a serious person so I like serious people. I only laugh on Sundays), but she worked great with Kris.
Trin is quite likable, despite being a spy. Along with that spy guy from the local government and the mercenary general whateverhernamewas they all add something to the mix.
The frigate captain with her weird bonzai and attitude just fits right in with the others. I like her.
The Admirals are always nice to have around, even if it’s usually just one or two scenes or so. At the very least they usually provide some background to whatever local conflict is currently going on, making it clearer why I in particular should care about why the enemy does this or that.
Bad Guy Admiral is a decent antagonist. Not one of those “mwhaha I’m evil so I do evil things for evil reasons” types, which particularly in military fiction I find crucial (wars very rarely have a good side. I mean, this is fiction and it’s OK that the good guys are, in fact, the good guys, but it’s boring if the bad guys are just some caricature of evil all the time).
The two science I thought were also nicely handled. They really come across as these stereotypical science types and in that case that was rather a plus. Of course, a honorable mention also needs to go to the rock. 😉
So, yeah, I like most of the recurring cast and usually the new characters, too. I’m not too into multi-POVs so I wouldn’t want all of them to constantly pop up and get their own scenes and whatnot but it’s nice when it happens where it makes sense; and of course see how Kris interacts with them and what they make of her ^^;
That you for the great comment! We are so happy the rock got an honorable mention. 🙂
Hi There,
What did everyone think of the book?
I’ve been lucky enough to have read what’s been written of the next book and believe me it is very much worth the wait!
Oh well. Cliffhanger. Sigh.
Thanks for reading! Hopefully, the next book will redeem the cliffhanger for you.
Ah, well, it wasn’t so bad it needs “redeeming”. That’d be exaggerating. The comment was more akin to a certain level of resignation – “more waiting” 😉
I admit I didn’t like this one quite as much as the others in the series, even before the end, I think. But it wasn’t anything too extreme; no outraged “I’ll need to purge this from my ebook reader” or anything.
Glad to hear that. 🙂
If we may ask, which book have you liked best of the series so far?