Awesome Indies Book Awards

Enduring Endurance

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Awesome Indies
Enduring Endurance
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Published: August 10, 2013
Infusing the traditional science fiction format with humor and awkward coworkers, Enduring Endurance follows the not-so-best-and-brightest of humanity as they explore the galaxy by accident.   Infusing the traditional science fiction format with humor and awkward coworkers, Enduring Endurance follows the not-so-best-and-brightest of humanity as they explore the galaxy by accident. Captain Thomas Withers expects the worst when he’s assigned command of the Endurance, the least-respected ship in the United Earth Law Enforcement Corps. He…

Assessed for Awesome Indies

Books in this series:
Awesome Allshorts: Last Days, Lost Ways
Endurance
Mightier than the Sword2
Under Cover3
Preferred Dead4

Please note:  The Endurance series is no longer available as separate volumes. The complete series of books 1 to 5 is available as one book.  Please click here. 

 

Purchase on: Amazon

2 responses to “Enduring Endurance”

  1. Shauna avatar
    Shauna

    Reviewed by Shauna – May 22, 2015

    4 Stars

    This book sits as easily in humour or adventure with space as the backdrop as it does science fiction. The quirky characters take centre-stage and drive the story, rather than technology and plot.

    Thomas Withers has just been promoted to Captain of the space ship Endurance, but he’s not happy. He had ‘…dreamed about this day from childhood. Now he was here, he wished he’d stayed in bed.’ One of the things I enjoyed most is the quietly ironic tone of the writing which remains true throughout the book.

    We discover the captain’s promising career has come to a resounding halt after putting the life of a hostage ahead of an operation. This act endears him to the reader and ensures we are on his side as he is assigned to lead a ship of misfits. What he finds is a group of quirky individuals with their own reasons for being on the Endurance

    Thomas has plans to improve the discipline of the crew and therefore his own future options, but he doesn’t have time to implement them before one of the chief engineer’s experiments finally works. The result is that Thomas and his crew are the first humans to leave the universe. While trying to reproduce the experiment so they can return home, they discover not one but two alien species.

    The writing is crisp, and the character interactions humorous and honest as Thomas discovers that even a group of individuals who have been written off can pull together and create some surprising results.

    This book is called Episode 1, and ‘episode’ describes the novella length and shape of the book perfectly. I’m looking forward to reading Episode 2.

    I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.

    Reply
  2. Connick avatar
    Connick

    Reviewed by Connick – January 27, 2016

    4 Stars

    This was a brave choice of title, as I guess we’ve all had to endure tedious books in our time. Thankfully Enduring Endurance is lightyears from tedium. It is a fast, exciting adventure, wrapped up in around 80 pages. It begins with a fairly Star Trekie vision of future Earth with our hero, a discredited lieutenant being promoted to Captain of a space ship full of similarly disgraced crew, for allowing his moral fibre to take precedence over orders, effectively side-lining him for the rest of his career. He begins his new role by taking a strict authoritarian tack (determined to make good of a bad situation) with limited success, as the Endurance begins its tour of the most desolate reaches of the solar system. It isn’t long however, before the ship is sent massively off course and the crew are forced to forget their differences and work together to find a way to return home. As events spiral out of the group’s control, there are alien encounters, not all of them friendly or resolved without a battle.

    This was a very enjoyable page-turner and a great start to what I’m sure will be a thrilling series of books. If I were to offer some constructive criticism… it is a short story with a lot going on, so there is a lack of suspense, building tension and peril. It seemed like each situation was resolved a little too quickly and then on to the next. I also feel that this type of book: short, exciting, action packed, and part of a sequence of stories (I believe four have been released so far) would lend itself very well to a cliff-hanger ending, to get the reader scurrying to find the next instalment to find out what happens. A bit cheeky perhaps, but I wouldn’t have had a problem with that. This is not to suggest that the actual ending is unsatisfying.

    I received this book free from Awesome Indies Books in return for an honest review.

    Reply

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