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Murder World: Kaiju Dawn
Captain Vincente Huerta and the crew of the Fancy have been hired to retrieve a valuable item from a downed research vessel at the edge of the enemy’s space.
It was going to be an easy payday.
But what Captain Huerta and the men, women and alien under his command didn’t know was that they were being sent to the most dangerous planet in the galaxy.
Something large, ancient and most assuredly evil resides on the planet of Gorgon IV. Something so terrifying that man could barely fathom it with his puny mind. Captain Huerta must use every trick in the book, and possibly write an entirely new one, if he wants to escape Murder World.
It was going to be an easy payday.
But what Captain Huerta and the men, women and alien under his command didn’t know was that they were being sent to the most dangerous planet in the galaxy.
Something large, ancient and most assuredly evil resides on the planet of Gorgon IV. Something so terrifying that man could barely fathom it with his puny mind. Captain Huerta must use every trick in the book, and possibly write an entirely new one, if he wants to escape Murder World.
- GenresScience Fiction
175 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 29, 2014
6 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Jason Córdova
75 books56 followersBestselling author Jason Cordova is both a John W. Campbell Award and Dragon Award finalist (though not in the same year). He is the author of Mountain of Fire and Monster Hunter Memoirs: Fever (w/ Larry Correia), and editor of Chicks in Tank Tops and Dancing with Destruction.
Along the way, he has had novels published in multiple languages around the world, been featured in over 40 anthologies, and has penned over two dozen novels across many genres, including YA, horror, science fiction, and urban fantasy.
A history nerd, he is a Navy veteran, former teacher, and is currently an Associate Editor at Baen Books.
Along the way, he has had novels published in multiple languages around the world, been featured in over 40 anthologies, and has penned over two dozen novels across many genres, including YA, horror, science fiction, and urban fantasy.
A history nerd, he is a Navy veteran, former teacher, and is currently an Associate Editor at Baen Books.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
July 19, 2014
A title like "Murder World: Kaiju Dawn" doesn't give the impression of a pansy novel. So I took a chance. I'm glad I did. I don't much care for too much introspection and not getting to the point. Jason Cordova and Eric S. Brown didn't fail in that regard. The novel starts with a hangover. The protagonist, Captain Vincente Huerta, is basically a worthless bum, a guy so down on his luck it's amazing he's got a ship. But Huerta has a ship and a pilot. The pilot, a former soldier named Jasmine, is his saving grace. She's everything he's not. She's his badass moral compass. She keeps him honest, and alive. He'll need it. Huerta takes a job by some clandestine government agency that pays him big bucks to do a small job. He just needs to visit a backwater planet on the outskirts of his government's space and recover data from a wrecked ship. But the ship is on Gorgon IV, known informally as Murder World. Hueta knows he needs help and enlists the aid of a Dirty Dozen-type crew. He needs them. The story does not slow down. The writing is tight and the characters believable and interesting. Hueta and crew go through a gauntlet. And it doesn't let up. Death seems certain. But the authors throw in a very satisfying twist at the end. I read this in a single day, not intending to do more than maybe a chapter or two. Surprised myself by getting three-quarters of the way through and just plowed on.
July 6, 2015
I hope this is the worst that Jason Cordova writes, because if this is his best and Cordova is up for the Campbell Award for best new writer, science fiction is seriously hurting for good new authors.
Honestly.
Murder World: Kaiju Dawn opens on an a spaceship captain who is something of a skallywag, but lacking all of the amusing characteristics that make skallywag's entertaining and endearing. He's just disgusting, self-interested, and rude. I never quite figured out why I should like him. He isn't attractive, evidently capable, or even honorable. There's just no reason to like him. Or believe that anyone would follow him. Heck, I kept expecting his first officer to just knock him off and take over the ship and the job.
The plot left a lot to be desired, too. Talk about predictable...or cliche? Yeah, cliche. And boring. I quit early. Life is just too short.
Look, this is the first thing of Jason's I've looked at, and it felt like a first attempt, a first draft. I'm not sure if the editor published it by accident or if there's a market out there for kaiju heavy plots (a clue: there is, but even that market deserves a better plot, a likelable (or at least capable) protagonist, and fewer cliches. I'll give Cordova a second chance, but I'm not sure I can give him a vote for the Campbell this time around. Maybe next year.
Honestly.
Murder World: Kaiju Dawn opens on an a spaceship captain who is something of a skallywag, but lacking all of the amusing characteristics that make skallywag's entertaining and endearing. He's just disgusting, self-interested, and rude. I never quite figured out why I should like him. He isn't attractive, evidently capable, or even honorable. There's just no reason to like him. Or believe that anyone would follow him. Heck, I kept expecting his first officer to just knock him off and take over the ship and the job.
The plot left a lot to be desired, too. Talk about predictable...or cliche? Yeah, cliche. And boring. I quit early. Life is just too short.
Look, this is the first thing of Jason's I've looked at, and it felt like a first attempt, a first draft. I'm not sure if the editor published it by accident or if there's a market out there for kaiju heavy plots (a clue: there is, but even that market deserves a better plot, a likelable (or at least capable) protagonist, and fewer cliches. I'll give Cordova a second chance, but I'm not sure I can give him a vote for the Campbell this time around. Maybe next year.
July 14, 2014
Nice little book with a good sense of humor, lot of action and well paced. cood be describe as a mix between firefly and pitch black.
Recommended for fan of military action and monster
Recommended for fan of military action and monster
June 16, 2015
Jason Cordova is a nominee for the 2015 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.
The shady captain of a merchant starship accepts a job from a secretive government agency, retrieving the database of a spy ship that crashed on Gorgon IV, a.k.a. Murder World. It's apparently not the first time Vincente Huerta has accepted dubious jobs from dubious clients or from the military before, and he'd probably be better off financially if he didn't drink a good deal of the profits. He also has at least one ex-wife he owes a substantial amount of money to. It's his saving grace that he has Jasmine, his pilot and a thoroughly kickass woman with no apparent reason to put up with him. She could surely get a better job!
After an encounter with the ex-wife to hire mercenaries, and another stop to buy fuel from a stoner gang called the Wild Ones (no, really, their security is so good their guy on watch is smoking a reefer on duty, but it's okay because they are all badass fighters like Jasmine), the Fancy zips off to Gorgon IV.
It's not at all clear that they knew before they arrived why Gorgon IV is so dangerous it has the nickname Murder World. They seem completely surprised by the conditions there.
At no point does Huerta make an intelligent decision. If he listened to Jasmine more often, he'd make less stupid decisions. Unfortunately, Jasmine has no objection to both of them leaving the ship, leaving the mercenaries they don't know and have no reason to trust unsupervised on the ship, while they go negotiate with the Wild Ones. When Kirk took his entire command staff down to an unknown or otherwise risky world, at least he was leaving competent and loyal Starfleet officers behind on the Enterprise.
And the quality of Huerta's decision-making doesn't get better.
I wish this were being played for laughs. I don't see any evidence of that.
The characters are cardboard. The prose and the plot are clunky. I wasn't overly impressed by Cordova's other sample in the Hugo Voters packet, the short "Hill 142," as I thought its inventions were arbitrary and not supported in the story, but it's professional level work. This isn't.
Not recommended.
The shady captain of a merchant starship accepts a job from a secretive government agency, retrieving the database of a spy ship that crashed on Gorgon IV, a.k.a. Murder World. It's apparently not the first time Vincente Huerta has accepted dubious jobs from dubious clients or from the military before, and he'd probably be better off financially if he didn't drink a good deal of the profits. He also has at least one ex-wife he owes a substantial amount of money to. It's his saving grace that he has Jasmine, his pilot and a thoroughly kickass woman with no apparent reason to put up with him. She could surely get a better job!
After an encounter with the ex-wife to hire mercenaries, and another stop to buy fuel from a stoner gang called the Wild Ones (no, really, their security is so good their guy on watch is smoking a reefer on duty, but it's okay because they are all badass fighters like Jasmine), the Fancy zips off to Gorgon IV.
It's not at all clear that they knew before they arrived why Gorgon IV is so dangerous it has the nickname Murder World. They seem completely surprised by the conditions there.
At no point does Huerta make an intelligent decision. If he listened to Jasmine more often, he'd make less stupid decisions. Unfortunately, Jasmine has no objection to both of them leaving the ship, leaving the mercenaries they don't know and have no reason to trust unsupervised on the ship, while they go negotiate with the Wild Ones. When Kirk took his entire command staff down to an unknown or otherwise risky world, at least he was leaving competent and loyal Starfleet officers behind on the Enterprise.
And the quality of Huerta's decision-making doesn't get better.
I wish this were being played for laughs. I don't see any evidence of that.
The characters are cardboard. The prose and the plot are clunky. I wasn't overly impressed by Cordova's other sample in the Hugo Voters packet, the short "Hill 142," as I thought its inventions were arbitrary and not supported in the story, but it's professional level work. This isn't.
Not recommended.
May 27, 2015
There's something you need to understand about me. I love monsters. The bigger and scarier the better.
For a long time I considered my love of monsters to be a guilty pleasure. The stories typically aren't filled with high literary merit. The plots aren't complex and they don't make you think very much.
I've embraced my love of monsters, and I don't even feel guilty about it.
That being said, this book isn't going to make you think. It's not masterful in a literary sense. In fact, there were a few points where I think the writing could have used a good editor. (At one point, I was begging for the authors to use a thesaurus, after the word kaiju had been used 6 times in one paragraph.)
Blemishes in the writing style aside, this was a story that I really enjoyed. There were big monsters, and big tough characters with big hearts on the inside. There was lots of action, and the different breeds of kaiju were really creatively imagined.
If you like big monsters, you'll love this.
For a long time I considered my love of monsters to be a guilty pleasure. The stories typically aren't filled with high literary merit. The plots aren't complex and they don't make you think very much.
I've embraced my love of monsters, and I don't even feel guilty about it.
That being said, this book isn't going to make you think. It's not masterful in a literary sense. In fact, there were a few points where I think the writing could have used a good editor. (At one point, I was begging for the authors to use a thesaurus, after the word kaiju had been used 6 times in one paragraph.)
Blemishes in the writing style aside, this was a story that I really enjoyed. There were big monsters, and big tough characters with big hearts on the inside. There was lots of action, and the different breeds of kaiju were really creatively imagined.
If you like big monsters, you'll love this.
February 25, 2015
Quick, fun read with plenty of humor. Nasty monsters vs tough men, and an ending you don't see coming.
Captain Vincente Huerta is an old, out-of shape drunk with a reputation for taking on assignments that no one else will take. So when the military asks him to recover some cargo from a ship that crashed onto a planet, he demanded a lot of money and took the assignment. Only then did his crew remind him that the planet was known as "murder world", that no one had ever returned, and that he probably just killed his entire crew.
The Captain and his crew must deal with a military that lied to him, a women who's shot him in the past, a mercenary crew who'd rather kill him, giant killer demons, and a terrible enemy who will shoot him on sight. And nothing is exactly as it seems.
Captain Vincente Huerta is an old, out-of shape drunk with a reputation for taking on assignments that no one else will take. So when the military asks him to recover some cargo from a ship that crashed onto a planet, he demanded a lot of money and took the assignment. Only then did his crew remind him that the planet was known as "murder world", that no one had ever returned, and that he probably just killed his entire crew.
The Captain and his crew must deal with a military that lied to him, a women who's shot him in the past, a mercenary crew who'd rather kill him, giant killer demons, and a terrible enemy who will shoot him on sight. And nothing is exactly as it seems.
November 8, 2015
Jason Cordova did a great job in creating a believable world filled with monsters in Murder World: Kaiju Dawn. The characters were great, and you instantly find yourself hoping they survive. This book satisfies the reader's need for gore, action, and most importantly, a satisfying ending. Oh, I can't forget a strong as nails, female pilot who knows how to put monsters in their place. Can we ask for more? Maybe a sequel. Definitely a book that should be read.
May 27, 2015
Nominated for the Hugo Campbell award (best new writer). Space adventure/comedy/horror. A spaceship crewed by mercs land on a planet known as Murder World for a recovery job, and find it full of dangerous monsters.
Pretty entertaining, look forward to new works by this author.
Pretty entertaining, look forward to new works by this author.
June 10, 2023
Authors Jason Carodova & Eric S. Brown bring us the tale the of the Fancy and her Captain and their voyage to the Murder World for the United Earth forces. Vincent and Jasmine crew the Fancy and they have taken on a job for the United Earth. That job is to bring back both the data and a specimen from the planet known as Murder World. Vincent knows that this will be the job that pays everything off but he needs to get help in taking care of everything. His first stop is to his wife's bar and there she holds back on shooting him but rakes him over the colles to get her top six guys to go with her husband. Then the Fancy heads to a station on the edge of a rival human faction where they get supplies before heading to the planet that will change their life form here on out. As Jasmine pilots the Fancy in to the atmosphere she loses control and they crash. Once they recover from the crash they find that the hull of the Fancy has claw marks giving them an idea of what brought them down. There is more but I won't spoil it. The discriptions of the Kaiju make you think of Godzilla and there are some that would rival him but the one that will give you the creeps is Darkness/ I highly recommend this book to all Kaiju and Aliens fans.
January 18, 2024
This book wasn't awful but it was far from good. I tried my best to get through this one but the dialogue is what made me quit reading. The dialogue is awkward, clunky and just not good. Too many one liners that aren't funny coming from characters that I don't care about. Vincente is the main character, the captain of the ship, and he just isn't likable and I'm not sure if we are supposed to be rooting for him or not. The other characters are better but still pretty one dimensional. The Kaiju don't show up until over half way through this book and most of the first half is really boring. DNF at 56%, 2 out of 5 stars.
May 22, 2015
I read Murder World: Kaiju Dawn by Jason Cordova and Eric S. Brown because was part of the Hugo Voters Packet, intended to provide insight into what might make Jason Cordova an appropriate Campbell Award winner. Of course, it's difficult to know how much of the book is due to Cordova's input, but at least it's something to go on.
It's kind of a fun concept - mercenaries are hired to retrieve something from a military ship that crashed on a presumably uninhabited planet, only to crash themselves and discover the planet is full of kaiju - monsters from Japanese sf films. It's chock full of wisecracking fighters - I particularly liked the lethally kickass woman, as you would expect) and full-tilt action scenes and almost everyone dies before the last survivors make it off the planet (with some unexpected help). The characters and situations are walking cliches, the plot is rather formulaic, the craft is adequate to tell a story of this type, but that's about it. It's what I call a guilty pleasure read - there's nothing particularly remarkable about it, but it hits a few of my plot buttons and it's a quick and easy read when you're in the mood for something that does not challenge in the slightest.
It's kind of a fun concept - mercenaries are hired to retrieve something from a military ship that crashed on a presumably uninhabited planet, only to crash themselves and discover the planet is full of kaiju - monsters from Japanese sf films. It's chock full of wisecracking fighters - I particularly liked the lethally kickass woman, as you would expect) and full-tilt action scenes and almost everyone dies before the last survivors make it off the planet (with some unexpected help). The characters and situations are walking cliches, the plot is rather formulaic, the craft is adequate to tell a story of this type, but that's about it. It's what I call a guilty pleasure read - there's nothing particularly remarkable about it, but it hits a few of my plot buttons and it's a quick and easy read when you're in the mood for something that does not challenge in the slightest.
February 17, 2016
The good: Fun, easy read. Lots of action. Great monsters.
The neutral: I don't care about typos if it's a good story. Editors are a superfluous cost for great story tellers.
The bad: Eye-rolling grrl-power. Yolo? Muscles don't make an alpha male. It's all attitude and Yolo didn't have it. Finally, please, please, please delete the epilogue.
Overall, I still really enjoyed this book. I'd read another from Cordova and Brown.
The neutral: I don't care about typos if it's a good story. Editors are a superfluous cost for great story tellers.
The bad: Eye-rolling grrl-power. Yolo? Muscles don't make an alpha male. It's all attitude and Yolo didn't have it. Finally, please, please, please delete the epilogue.
Overall, I still really enjoyed this book. I'd read another from Cordova and Brown.
August 21, 2014
A fun quick read. Bad-ass monsters vs mercenaries with an ending that comes from out of left field.
June 10, 2015
Pretty standard space opera fare. Still, some of the characters are decent, and right at the end it does bring up an interesting question of who the enemy really is in the face of a mutual foe.
July 16, 2015
3 stars only because I forgive the typos and other errors. Not very original, but kind of fun.
September 5, 2015
Struggled to keep myself going.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews