Shakedowners cover art

Shakedowners

Shakedowers Series, Book 1

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Shakedowners

By: Justin Woolley
Narrated by: Grant Cartwright
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About this listen

Some starship captains explore strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations. Some lead missions of discovery through wormholes to the other side of the galaxy. Then there's Captain Iridius B. Franklin, someone who spent too long seeking out strange new bars and new alien cocktails.

After graduating bottom of his class at Space Command Academy, Iridius Franklin hasn't had the glamorous career he envisioned - instead he hauls cargo ships full of mining waste, alien land whale dung, and artificially intelligent toy dogs across the stars.

Iridius does have talent, though - he is exceptionally good at breaking starships. So, when not hauling freight, he is captain of a shakedown crew, a skeleton crew used to test newly constructed ships for faults before the real crew takes over.

While on a routine shakedown mission aboard the FSC Gallaway, soon to be pride of the Federation Fleet, Earth is attacked by an unknown alien life-form. With the galaxy in chaos, Captain Iridius B. Franklin finds himself, unqualified, understaffed, and completely unprepared, in command of the most advanced starship in the galaxy.

Now, he just needs to not break it.

©2021 Justin Woolley (P)2022 Tantor
Adventure Fiction Humorous Space Opera Space Science Fiction Interstellar Transportation Comedy
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What listeners say about Shakedowners

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  • Overall
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Very enjoyable

Entertaining and funny . On similar lines to the tv series The Orville. Best book I’ve read for a while.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Great Story for sci fi lovers

Immediately likeable characters, great humour, well researched and very well narrated. I really enjoyed this. Hope udotoo

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fun space adventure

Great performance, interesting and funny concept. Will definitely moving onto the next book. Can imagine this as a Red Dwarf storyline.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

the narration was brilliant

good story. only downside is now have to pay to start sequel. oh well, here we go again. well worth a listen

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excelent

Great romp through space. we'll read and preformed, excellent start to a series. looking forward to the next

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1 person found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Great fun and well worked

there were times when he was confused between rimmer or or lister but added interest.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

tongue in cheek irreverence

humourous character based storytelling with a heavy dollop and big nods to the big sci-fi characters and stories that inspired, fun

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

episodes of comedy mixed in with sheer grit

excellent story of the possibilities of what our future might be like with the onset of AI. One word, dangerous!!

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Douglas Adams this is NOT

OK ish Sci-fi story but to advertise it as "Douglas Adams like" is a slap in the face to that great author, Shame on your PR team

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Amateurly written but managed to finish freebie

Amateurly written--telling where showing was needed, shaky pacing, a camera POV that flattens the narrative, and weak humor that doesn't quite manage to be funny but does demolish dramatic tension. The plotting is mildly competent, even engaging toward the end.

You can say it's a hard sci-fi but only because it's plotted in that unimaginative way where you get the mandatory rogue AI (that in light of Chat GPT as of 2023 already aged badly), a Star Trek weaksauce of technobabble (with all the ST weaknesses and none of the strengths), standard FTL drives and plasma engines, and all the plot promises fulfilled EXACTLY the way you saw them 4 thousand times in D category movies and tv shows, down to the ramming of the ship into the enemy and the last second save of the main guy.

I was going to give it a 3 star, maybe even 3.5 rounded up to 4 because it ended with a genuinely exciting narrative promise, namely that the next book will treat the invasion of the race the AI came to prepare the galaxy against. I was actually about to press buy on the next one but then a pathologic mix of dread and paranoia made me check the blurbs and, lo and behold, the author decided to make them about something else, something MUCH LESS INTERESTING. Some trite time travel crap he's confident he can write probably from memory.

I'm over incompetent writing that can't identify its own narrative promises.

Gets 2* because I managed to finish it, which usually happens if the author didn't add anything terribly annoying or toxic. Granted, it was free on Audible, or I wouldn't have picked it up by the blurb to being with (it's obvious it's nothing original).

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