Not a pièce de résistance

* Narration -
The narrator has a soothing and interesting voice that doesn't grate the ears nor bores after long periods of listening. He also voice-acts for the characters which makes the story more lively and entertaining. I found some of the accents he performed unintentionally funny (the southerner one) but that's mainly because of the images that played out in my head while listening. Overall this is one of the better voices I've heard in audiobooks and it makes me want him to go overboard and go full radio-play.
* Story -
The story however is a mixed bag. I have not read nor listened to the first book in this series so I came in blind. I had no effort however picking up the story as all is explained intensively at the beginning. So much so I'm kind of eager to see what happened in the first book. The writing is told from the POV of characters which in many cases is often jarring due to the shortness of the sections. The story is reminiscent of others and is mainly a mix of The Expanse with New World Order conspiracy and intrigue and a dash of "sci-fi magic". Unfortunately some of the names used resemble other properties which immediately took me out of it. I also did not have an emotional investment with any of the characters - partially because I was reminded too often about other properties. Granted, this is a me-thing since I'm a glutton in that matter. The author also has a knack for using the same words over and over - the biggest culprit being "pièce de résistance" - which is used over 20 times in the book, Sometimes even at short intervals from each other. Overall the concept is interesting but it becomes a tad bit too cliché too fast. I also think it should have been fleshed out a little bit more and could have benefitted from some editing/rewrites.

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