Travelling to the far reaches of the known universe, to a planet previously undiscovered, the navy have come across something previously unseen – an earth-like planet that hold life. And intelligent life at that. Tev is a warrior from a clan, from the intelligent life on this planet, sent to investigate the strange lights in the sky and the strange creatures, setting the two cultures on a collision course.
The story is split evenly between the clan warrior Tev and a Fleet officer. The story is fairly well balanced, showing some good and bad of both sides rather than just having technologically superior dominating in every way. Or having the “simple” life be shown to be morally superior
The combat is well told and engaging, being clear on what is going on while keeping the tension. While there is a fair amount of combat in the short book, and with powered armour, the book isn’t another “space marine” story.
There are things that are almost too convenient for the sake of telling the story – the quick rate at which language is picked up (after going through a whole tonne of nouns but not much else) and how quickly Tev adapted to the technology. But these things are stretching credulity, without fully breaking it. I was willing to let them pass for the sake of the entertaining story.
Hints at a few mysteries that (hopefully) will be further addressed in subsequent books.
The blurb does say “Primal Dawn is the first short novel of the Primal Series, spanning centuries of conflict following first contact” which makes me wonder if the character we have got to know here will not be around in subsequent books, as they may be set decades or centuries later.
Narration by Andrew Tell was really good. Expression/emotion, and different voices for all the characters. It was well paced and engaging, easy to follow. More than happy to listen to more of his work.