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Paul Taylor is in his last year of high school, watching along with everyone else in the world as the megacorporation known as Star Force leads the nations of Earth into space. Wanting to be a part of the adventure but not qualifying for any of their highly competitive jobs, his chance of joining looks to be nil until one day a new Star Force recruitment package opens up.
The A7 program, listed only as 'Looking for the Best of the Best,’ has but a single prequalification...a sub 5:00 mile that Paul's track team skills qualify him for.
Figuring he has nothing to lose, Paul takes the Star Force tests expecting to fail, but soon finds himself accepted and whisked away to their headquarters where he learns the truth about the space corporation…and the secret alien threat that it's been created to prepare Earth for.
Mind blown, he and the other A7 candidates are then told that they’re not here to help, but to LEAD the hopeless war on the horizon, where victory does not lie in defeating an ancient enemy, but in simply finding a way to survive it.
An ancient enemy mistakenly known as…
The Dinosaurs.
The A7 program, listed only as 'Looking for the Best of the Best,’ has but a single prequalification...a sub 5:00 mile that Paul's track team skills qualify him for.
Figuring he has nothing to lose, Paul takes the Star Force tests expecting to fail, but soon finds himself accepted and whisked away to their headquarters where he learns the truth about the space corporation…and the secret alien threat that it's been created to prepare Earth for.
Mind blown, he and the other A7 candidates are then told that they’re not here to help, but to LEAD the hopeless war on the horizon, where victory does not lie in defeating an ancient enemy, but in simply finding a way to survive it.
An ancient enemy mistakenly known as…
The Dinosaurs.
68 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 6, 2012
21 people are currently reading
468 people want to read
About the author
Aer-ki Jyr
242 books265 followersAer-ki Jyr is one of the top 20 science fiction authors on Amazon due to his extremely long and ongoing space opera epic STAR FORCE, one of the longest military science fiction series ever written.
Check out his website and forum at www.aerkijyr.com
Check out his website and forum at www.aerkijyr.com
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 9, 2016
This is one of my now favorite book series, I have read a TON of sci-fi military, but this one beats them all, for the reason, its not all military sci-fi, most of its the training...I cant give it any more stars :( others wise I would. The book, is like most sci-fi like series, but with the twist of it being in the not to future, and the Author doesn't go to far with it, not giving is people the strongest army ever, or the best solders, just the best and strongest in this solar system.
All in all, this is the best series I have read yet, and seeing as it takes me about 1 hour, 30 minutes to read 1, that is going to take me a long time to read, something I cant say for most series.
All in all, this is the best series I have read yet, and seeing as it takes me about 1 hour, 30 minutes to read 1, that is going to take me a long time to read, something I cant say for most series.
December 14, 2017
my first full reread 0f 114 episodes
if you can get past
-the excessive use of the word troubleshoot
-the excessive use of the word their lies the
-the excessive use of the word love a challenge ,crave challenge ,looking for a challenge etc.
-the excessive use of the word newb,newbie (especially this ,annoying as a bee in the ass hole)
-the matura system and how parents can't wait to give up their babes and how Indignant SF feels if people refused
-all the fucking star wars references (i swear to fuck ,every fucking page)
-his refrence to pop culture is monotonous for the entire civilization
regardless
this is the my favorite science fiction series ever
if you can get past
-the excessive use of the word troubleshoot
-the excessive use of the word their lies the
-the excessive use of the word love a challenge ,crave challenge ,looking for a challenge etc.
-the excessive use of the word newb,newbie (especially this ,annoying as a bee in the ass hole)
-the matura system and how parents can't wait to give up their babes and how Indignant SF feels if people refused
-all the fucking star wars references (i swear to fuck ,every fucking page)
-his refrence to pop culture is monotonous for the entire civilization
regardless
this is the my favorite science fiction series ever
August 31, 2023
I didn't find this compelling.
August 17, 2017
I'm reviewing up to Star Force 32, not just this first part.
I found this series because of Return of The Ancients this author wrote as StarGate fic. I really liked that and expected the same here. It's not, all chapters or parts are really long and the first 5 are military training, imagine reading dozens of pages in a row of dodging paintballs, taking out paintball turrets, hand to hand combat... Yep, it's really boring so those parts I skipped and read only those concerning politics and destined not to be main character director of Star Force. After those 5 chapters it gets better but still instead of your usual space opera with politics, technology advancement and building + some space battles, this is combat combat combat combat and most of it is unfortunately boring ground combat, killing lizard alien #1 in detail up to killing lizard alien x 100000. Even space combat gets boring if it lasts a couple dozen pages. Now don't get me wrong, there is tech advancement and some battle are interesting but that's about it. There is little to no politics and if I had to read all that irrelevant combat that lasts for dozens pages a time and training I would've given up long ago. Author also references stuff from the 90',00's a lot like Star Wars, Halo, Mario Kart... Nothing wrong with that as it gives you a chuckle and you can relate, but the characters are born around 2025, I don't think they would even watch or play any of that stuff, and even after 300 years pass they still talk about those. Another thing is super human power system, it goes from adept(ok) to acolyte(wtf, that is assistant to a priest for those who don't know) to ranger(another wtf, how is that related to anything, only a minority of these commando main characters take the ranger route yet they are all called like that if they reach a certain power level). Power levels? Done very poorly, each of these classes have 100 levels, and adept lv 100 is no hercules, neither is an acolyte, ranger? maybe if you count the strength of ~10men as such, so from pro athlete condition which is adept lv 1 to lv 100 ranger is 300 levels for a max of ~10x human strenght, what's the difference between a few levels? Barely measurable. The main group of characters are de facto immortal as long as they train 6h everyday, increase the difficulty and take supplements, okay except that the author goes to great lengths to explain this philosphy, so much that I think he actually believes it. If you wanted to see reorganization of Earth, the big reveal of aliens, making of alliances, those are just skipped for more combat. If you want to read mostly combat from perspective of commandos, mechs, individuals in spaceships and training, I guess this is it for you.
I found this series because of Return of The Ancients this author wrote as StarGate fic. I really liked that and expected the same here. It's not, all chapters or parts are really long and the first 5 are military training, imagine reading dozens of pages in a row of dodging paintballs, taking out paintball turrets, hand to hand combat... Yep, it's really boring so those parts I skipped and read only those concerning politics and destined not to be main character director of Star Force. After those 5 chapters it gets better but still instead of your usual space opera with politics, technology advancement and building + some space battles, this is combat combat combat combat and most of it is unfortunately boring ground combat, killing lizard alien #1 in detail up to killing lizard alien x 100000. Even space combat gets boring if it lasts a couple dozen pages. Now don't get me wrong, there is tech advancement and some battle are interesting but that's about it. There is little to no politics and if I had to read all that irrelevant combat that lasts for dozens pages a time and training I would've given up long ago. Author also references stuff from the 90',00's a lot like Star Wars, Halo, Mario Kart... Nothing wrong with that as it gives you a chuckle and you can relate, but the characters are born around 2025, I don't think they would even watch or play any of that stuff, and even after 300 years pass they still talk about those. Another thing is super human power system, it goes from adept(ok) to acolyte(wtf, that is assistant to a priest for those who don't know) to ranger(another wtf, how is that related to anything, only a minority of these commando main characters take the ranger route yet they are all called like that if they reach a certain power level). Power levels? Done very poorly, each of these classes have 100 levels, and adept lv 100 is no hercules, neither is an acolyte, ranger? maybe if you count the strength of ~10men as such, so from pro athlete condition which is adept lv 1 to lv 100 ranger is 300 levels for a max of ~10x human strenght, what's the difference between a few levels? Barely measurable. The main group of characters are de facto immortal as long as they train 6h everyday, increase the difficulty and take supplements, okay except that the author goes to great lengths to explain this philosphy, so much that I think he actually believes it. If you wanted to see reorganization of Earth, the big reveal of aliens, making of alliances, those are just skipped for more combat. If you want to read mostly combat from perspective of commandos, mechs, individuals in spaceships and training, I guess this is it for you.
January 11, 2020
Humans discover they are a race of escaped slaves. Incredible technology is discovered. Earth must prepare before the overlords return to recover their "property". So … some cadets go to training exercises??? And that is all! Where is the plot? Maybe something happens in some of the later books in the series, but I will not be reading them to find out.
July 8, 2021
More like a chapter than a book! "One of the longest scifi military series ever written" - only if you count the number of "books". If this was an audio book, itd be 90 minutes.
June 5, 2022
While I liked the concept and the general layout of this series, up to at least book 30. This is mostly just all training and multiple character's point of view ,very little focus on paul later on. It is mostly just training, training, training and tech building up but very little plot. Around book 24 , you start getting some more actual scenes and not just exposition but that's how long it takes..
Honestly this is one of those series that it sounds like the author is stating his own values or thoughts about life or politics, how people should be or how things should go.
Like in the series they claim anyone can live forever if they just exercise enough , it's their way of thinking keeping the aliens from doing so. They literally have no basis for that just assuming they are like humans and able to do the same.
Humans even can't live forever without the drug the aliens gave them it seems, yet they claim that they could even if their own plot says they couldn't. Do they think that the greeks didn't do hardcore training all the time? If so then the greeks would have lived forever in this universe!
Honestly it comes off almost like the author himself thinks if you exercise tons that you in OUR world could live forever, not just in this storyline of the book. So it can some times come off, awkward and preachy but the concept is fun, the characters are enjoyable. Their OP badassness is fun but there are tons of flaws.
Honestly this is one of those series that it sounds like the author is stating his own values or thoughts about life or politics, how people should be or how things should go.
Like in the series they claim anyone can live forever if they just exercise enough , it's their way of thinking keeping the aliens from doing so. They literally have no basis for that just assuming they are like humans and able to do the same.
Humans even can't live forever without the drug the aliens gave them it seems, yet they claim that they could even if their own plot says they couldn't. Do they think that the greeks didn't do hardcore training all the time? If so then the greeks would have lived forever in this universe!
Honestly it comes off almost like the author himself thinks if you exercise tons that you in OUR world could live forever, not just in this storyline of the book. So it can some times come off, awkward and preachy but the concept is fun, the characters are enjoyable. Their OP badassness is fun but there are tons of flaws.
September 8, 2018
There is only one character template and every main character is that template. I think it is supposed to be who the author thinks he would be or dreams he could be. Besides that and the fact the author has no idea how humans would actually interact with each other, it seems good. If paul and megan don't just start having sex soon, I'm going to assume that the author has had no human contact for his whole life.
Wish the repeatitive phrase "save for ..." would stop being used.
Wish the repeatitive phrase "save for ..." would stop being used.
May 17, 2025
This series is just long winded fan-fiction at best. Even in the synopsis there's that blatant mass effect reference. The series will then read like a check-list of pop culture properties the author probably thought were cool growing up. Some of it almost seem like grounds for copywrite claims from the originators it's so blatant.
Short version: There's much better out there before reading this.
Short version: There's much better out there before reading this.
February 27, 2020
This fangirl is super pleased
Starts off a bit slow but it ends up being super important to get all the facts of how things started. I swept away by the magnitude of how fast the story moved. My heart was pounding by the end. It’s a quick read and I’m super excited to see where the story goes. Wish I found it sooner but glad there is already so many books to read!
Starts off a bit slow but it ends up being super important to get all the facts of how things started. I swept away by the magnitude of how fast the story moved. My heart was pounding by the end. It’s a quick read and I’m super excited to see where the story goes. Wish I found it sooner but glad there is already so many books to read!
November 10, 2019
It Does What it says on the tin, gives you a good yarn with sort of Old fashioned SF, yes each episode is short, but I started when I had all the episodes, Aer-ki Jyr has done a good job, give it a try.
July 7, 2020
Nice effort, a bit soft on the science part. Also, the series is so large that there is enough room for numerous sub-plots, in various flavours of military sci-fi (ground combat, space warfare, first contact etc).
February 11, 2025
After a couple of chapters I felt this was a bit like some of the SciFi books I read back in the 1960s and was looking forward to seeing how the story would develop. The problem was, it never really did, hundreds of pages of tedious training wasn’t what I was hoping for.
November 18, 2018
Looks like star wars as told through the lens of star gate so far. I'll read more but this isn't much to go on, especially considering the fact that these are supposed to be prequels I suppose.
February 24, 2019
Good must read
November 17, 2015
You know, I actually like the concept of this universe and the author has written an interesting introduction to the series. When it was first published I didn't pay a lot of attention to it due to its short story format, but I finally found the motivation to read the first episode and now I'm positively surprised.
That being said, the single episodes of only 20-25k words are quite short and as somebody who has been used to reading novel- and epic-length stories, it feels like an appetizer with no main course to follow. At the moment I'm still hungry, so I will probably keep reading - but at the same time I'm not convinced that 90 episodes of the same will make me happy.
It is a good thing, that the entire series seems to be available on Kindle Unlimited, because otherwise the price for this space opera would be a rip-off. 2.99 to 3.09 Euro each are a just not an economical choice for those readers without Kindle Unlimited.
That being said, the single episodes of only 20-25k words are quite short and as somebody who has been used to reading novel- and epic-length stories, it feels like an appetizer with no main course to follow. At the moment I'm still hungry, so I will probably keep reading - but at the same time I'm not convinced that 90 episodes of the same will make me happy.
It is a good thing, that the entire series seems to be available on Kindle Unlimited, because otherwise the price for this space opera would be a rip-off. 2.99 to 3.09 Euro each are a just not an economical choice for those readers without Kindle Unlimited.
December 25, 2012
An interesting beginning to the story/series. Hops around a bit more than I would like timeline-wise, but that's understandable given the serialized format.
March 13, 2015
very good start. We'll see how it goes from here
February 6, 2017
Stargate: SG-1 meets Jurassic Park.
Read
May 18, 2019DNF-ed. Too boring. Drags on and on. Listening to the narrator's voice was pure torture. Fell asleep a few times.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews