Admiral
An Evagardian Novel
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4.0 • 5 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
FIRST IN A NEW MILITARY SCIENCE FICTION SERIES
“I was on a dead ship on an unknown planet with three trainees freshly graduated into the Imperial Service. I tried to look on the bright side.”
He is the last to wake. The label on his sleeper pad identifies him as an admiral of the Evagardian Empire—a surprise as much to him as to the three recent recruits now under his command. He wears no uniform, and he is ignorant of military protocol, but the ship’s records confirm he is their superior officer.
Whether he is an Evagardian admiral or a spy will be of little consequence if the crew members all end up dead. They are marooned on a strange world, their ship’s systems are failing one by one—and they are not alone.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Danker's debut tries to be hard SF, but is too shallow and thin to make much of an impression. A team of strangers wake from sleep storage to find their spaceship at a standstill and abandoned by the crew. The three newly graduated cadets and someone who may or may not be an admiral must put aside their suspicions of one another and work together to survive. Danker stocks his book with characters who never develop, places them in peril that never quite strikes, and lowers stakes even when he's trying to raise tension. The nameless protagonist is saddled with a mysterious past, a drug addiction that barely affects the story, and a series of crises that never reach a critical stage. The antagonists are intended to be terrifying, but are as undeveloped as the rest of the characters. The action proceeds at a fair pace and is easy to follow, but there are too many clich s and conveniences to create a solid arc. The lack of definition and narrow imagination leave the writing flat and unremarkable. For a first effort, the workmanlike quality shows skill, but there is little to differentiate it from other novels in the genre.
