Voyager

by Carl Rackman

Voyager One. A tiny probe hurtling through the void of outer space more than twelve billion miles from Earth, it is the remotest human object in existence. Callie Woolf, Voyager Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is stunned when the probe unexpectedly downloads a series of increasingly disturbing images.

Within 24 hours, she is running for her life.

Brad Barnes, a conflicted FBI agent assigned to the case, soon uncovers a deadly plot that could change the balance of power on Earth and bring the United States to its knees. He must fight for survival in a race against time to defeat the conspirators, and confront a potentially explosive reality: that mankind may not be alone in the universe.

Voyager is an action-packed conspiracy thriller by Carl Rackman.

309 pages, Paperback

Published March 25, 2017

About the author

Hi! I'm Carl Rackman, a British former airline pilot turned author. I spent my working life travelling the world and this has given me a keen interest in other people and cultures. I've drawn on my many experiences for my writing.

I write suspense thrillers with a grounded science-fiction theme. I like reading novels that feature atmospheric locales and I enjoy complex, absorbing storylines combined with rich, believable characters, so that's the sort of fiction I write. I try to create immersive worlds for the reader to explore, and characters who are more than just vehicles for the story.

I come from a naval military background and have held a lifelong interest in military history and seafaring - all my books usually contain some of these elements!

I hope you'll enjoy my books and leave reviews. I try to personally thank reviewers if they've particularly enjoyed my books.

Reviews

[Cathy Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since Bradley Barnes lost his wife in the 9/11 terror attacks he’s been part of a highly specialised FBI counter terrorism team. As the story opens the team are preparing to assist in a coordinated raid against a suspected source of domestic terrorism. The raid doesn’t go according to plan and there are several fatalities.

Meanwhile in NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dr Callie Woolf, Project Manager of the Voyager Interstellar Mission, and her team are becoming aware of issues on board Voyager 1, billions of miles away in deepest space. They are unsure whether security has been compromised or the irregularity is caused by something entirely different, but the images witnessed by the team as they download cause incredulity and disbelief. Whatever the origin, something untoward is going on and Callie is soon in fear for her life.

In London, airline pilot Matt Ramprakash, who is also a freelance agent for MI5, arrives at the airport for an impending flight to Newark, New Jersey. A regular, easy trip for Matt…until he receives a text. The instructions cause Matt more than moments of doubt and anxiety but nevertheless he follows the directive from his handler.

Three seemingly unrelated incidents and groups of people destined to collide with deadly force and the atmosphere is tense. The author has created a vivid and compelling scenario.

Carl Rackman has done it again. His debut novel Irex is incredibly good and Voyager, although there couldn’t be more difference in content, is another winner and re-enforces the quality of the author’s writing. This is a fast paced and action packed story. The plot is complex and well thought through, with tension and suspense building as events unfold layer by layer. Well defined characters evolve throughout the narrative.

The story is told in the third person from differing perspectives, which works well, giving a rounded picture of the timeline and intensifying the pressure and intrigue. Add in murders, attempted murder, enhanced humans and plot twists and you have a cracking read. The premise is highly creative and convincing in today’s high tech and power-driven world and has obviously been very well researched, and includes fascinating insights into the workings of NASA and the national security agencies.

[H.A. LYNN · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voyager is a riveting sci-fi conspiracy thriller! It’s well written, full of descriptive detail and well-rounded characters. From page one, I was gripped by Brad, my favorite character, who can’t seem to catch a break. However, like agent Ferguson, I question the believably of his relationship with Mirage, a woman who tries to kill him.

The action scenes throughout the story set the pace for the book, keeping you engaged as you uncover the mysteries surrounding Voyager One. I did get tripped up a few times, getting lost in some of the lengthy paragraphs. There’s nothing specifically wrong with the narrative; the writing and descriptions are spot on, but I would have liked more paragraph breaks throughout the book. It would help maintain the pace through the explanations, jargon and the characters’ internal thoughts. I may have missed pieces of the story here, or felt I didn’t need the information to keep up, so I skipped it or skimmed it.

As the story progresses, there are more character perspectives added here-and-there, which I liked. It helped me see clearly the picture the author was trying to paint. There were, however, a few chapters that switched pov within the same scene, which I found distracting. Some of these were minor mistakes, but others were unnecessarily used to expand on an idea or situation.

Overall, I enjoyed this thrilling sci-fi, and look forward to finding out where the characters go from here. My reviews of Voyager are on Goodreads and Amazon, and I follow Carl Rackman on Twitter and Facebook.

[Tom Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half was good. I felt like the second half went in a direction that I didn’t care for.

[Farhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really impressed with the strong writing chops of this unknown author. The first-half of the novel was very strong: the way the plot unfolded over multiple narratives, the decoding of the mysterious images sent by NASA probe Voyager, and the espionage angle.

But when the female FBI agent turns out to be a genetically enhanced mercenary, the whole plot crumbled into an embarrassing and hokey mishmash of inexplicable love-at-first-sight with the unlikeliest of persons. Also, the Voyager images became a distant and irrelevant back story.

The author has a lot of talent and if he had stayed away from sappy romances and focused on the Voyager story, the book would have been a much better one. Too many sub-plots and the wrong ones taking over the story ruined what could have been a genuinely impressive addition to the sub-genre of first-contact sci-fi novels.

[Steve Cantwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic thriller. Conspiracies, chases, fights: what's not to love? I thoroughly enjoyed this wonderful second book by Carl Rackman and would recommend it to pretty much anyone!

[S. Bavey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voyager begins as a science fiction thriller with believable characters set in recent, real world situations. These scenarios may be unfamiliar to the majority of readers, but due to the author’s careful descriptions and explanations it is not difficult to visualize the locations and imagine the relationships being depicted.

The NASA Voyager team receives images from deep space which could be considered evidence of extra terrestrial life - if they are real. The Voyager team and its project manager, Callie Woolf, quickly decide that the photos must be a hoax, sent from Earth and bounced back from Voyager. Soon after the photos are downloaded, Callie finds herself in mortal danger and has to go on the run to preserve her life.

At this point the intriguing prospect of possible alien life is lost for a while as the characters are developed and the story becomes more of a gripping spy thriller.

A copy of the photos taken from the lab by Callie is sent to England and then secretly returned to the US by way of pilot/secret agent Matt Ramprakash. Matt ends up in the custody of FBI agents Bradley Barnes and Diane Breecker. Following a thrilling rescue he finds himself in the same safe house where Callie Woolf has been placed and immediately the two appear to fall in love. This incongruous love story did not ring true for me and felt like an unnecessary addition to the main story.

Bradley Barnes is the other main character. A brave and likeable FBI agent who at first appears emotionally stunted by past tragedy and yet distracted by the beauty of the superhuman agent Diane Breecker. Callie has been analyzing Voyager’s photos and Brad is assigned to discover their origins. Could there actually be aliens en route to Earth or is it all a conspiracy?

The plot is developed carefully and at an exciting pace that still makes it easy to follow everything that is happening. I would have liked more emphasis on the investigation into the possibility of extraterrestrial life rather than the character relationships. Having said that, the story is gripping, with plenty of exciting chases, fights and an attempt on the life of the President of the USA thrown in. It was very well written and I eagerly await the sequel.

[Rosie Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voyager is an American based techno-thriller.

It opens with the terrible events of 9/11 and introduces us to Bradley Barnes.

Chapter one begins in September 2016 as Barnes and his team from the FBI are about to storm a building containing suspects with terrorism links. Unfortunately the main suspects escape—with super-human speed.

In California, Dr Callie Woolf, project manager of the Voyager Interstellar Mission, is alerted to a security breach; a probe, far out in space, begins sending back unexpected images. The data is highly sensitive and Callie’s team are put on immediate paid leave. These vacations become permanent for some, in a series of mysterious deaths. Callie is also targeted, but quick reactions keep her alive; however, her attempts to go on the run are short-lived when she is arrested for espionage.

When Barnes is told to pick up a British pilot suspected of smuggling at Newark airport, he joins Agent Breecker for the job. He doesn’t know it, but he’s about to come face to face with a genetically enhanced super-soldier. Created by the Triumvirate, a group of manipulators who cause chaos to undermine governments and manoeuvre money and power around the globe; the super-soldiers remove those in their way.

This book is fast paced and a race against time, as the tension is built between the main players, and the story unfolds to reveal quite believable possibilities. Sadly they may well echo many such power-hungry groups around the globe today. Recommended for readers who enjoy American law enforcement stories and techno-thrillers.

[Elizabeth Lloyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

This style of novel is not my usual choice of genre but it’s always good to try entering a new environment and adapt to a faster paced narrative. And I am really glad I chose Carl Rackman’s second book.

From the Prologue when Brad talks to his fiancé by phone as she tries to escape from the second tower on 9/11 to the culmination of this thriller on the day of the Inauguration of a new President in 2017, this fast-moving thriller keeps you guessing. There are a number of significant characters to meet, including Brad, a member of an FBI counter-terrorism unit, Dr Callie Woolf, Project Manager of the Voyager Interstellar Mission and Matt, a British pilot who freelances for MI5. Brad soon finds himself in disgrace, Callie fears her project will be cancelled and Matt may lose his freedom.

The plot is complex and offers “alternative facts” and there are acronyms and details of the workings of NASA and US Security staff to come to grips with. The characters gradually fill out into believable personalities and each of them becomes increasingly endangered. And then we meet Mirage, a mysterious superwoman. Is she good or evil? Is the world about to be invaded by creatures from another world, or is there a conspiracy? This tautly constructed suspense novel kept me turning the pages and hoping that Brad and Callie would solve the mystery and survive all attempts on their lives.

[Terry Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voyager is an extremely well-plotted space-conspiracy-techno-thriller. The author clearly knows what he's talking about in all aspects of the novel; it's clever, professionally presented and I think that lovers of this genre will lap it up. It's very much an action-orientated book which I bought after reading Rackman's debut, Irex. A definite page-turner, though I liked the way the gradual way the plot unfolded. Well thought out and not gimmicky at all.

[Bill Dodsworth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent thriller. Kept me turning the pages and hooked right up until the last twist in the plot.

[Sean Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite being a very enjoyable thriller, the title and description of the work leads you to believe there's a lot more to do with Voyager and any sort of science than there actually is. I felt a little cheated.

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost 3.5 stars

[Hugo S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Voyager in the limelight.

I'll make my review even shorter than I usually bother in making my reviews and goes like this: this story development is disappointing, the first part started somewhat promising and then it felt apart, with characters that felt rather unrealistic and didn't live up to the roles they were created for. This book reads like a script for a movie made for television, definitely not for me, it reads like the kind of stuff I try to avoid when picking a book but what can I say, maybe the titled mislead me.

[Ronald A. Pagano · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, although a little simple!

Fast reading! Action parts were good and involved the reader. The end was a little schlocky, but it lays the premise for the sequel?

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found some of the Americanized language difficult at first until I got used to it. I enjoyed the last few chapters much more.

[Tony Hogger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent read. Kept me invested from the first page until the last. Well done Carl Rackman👍

[Greg Lang · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I first purchased this book, I excited to read it believing this was going to be a fictional story wrapped around actual scientific events with a splash of science fiction and intrigue. Indeed, the story started out that way but soon turned political and the science fiction portion became a sort of back burner issue as the political side took over. Worse, the author's political leanings are clearly on display, and I noted that they would only appeal to about a third of the target market. My opinion, if you are going to write a novel that you wish to sell to everyone, keep your politics out of it regardless of which side you come down on.

I ended up finding the plot to be entirely predictable and was further disappointed to find most of the story was not resolved in one book and continues on into another. I'm not intrigued enough to read more so I simply moved on.