Planetfall Origins

by Christopher George Quick

Guaranteed to please the military Sci-Fi lover in you. If Battlestar Gallactica made love to Starship Troopers and had an illegitimate child... and that child was raised by the crew of Firefly, you would only begin to have Planetfall. This is the answer for your Sci-Fi void. Follow Shepard through his enlistment in the Alliance's Mining Corp. You only have to do ten years in the Corp instead of the usual twenty to get retirement, but of course that assumes you can survive it. Mining deployments are brutal, and the hostile xenoforms are always hell-bent on killing you. Oh yeah, and the tentative peace that is holding humanity together seems to be fraying at the seams and its impossible to know who to trust. So if you're ready to sign your life away, this book is ready to take you on your first tour of duty. --Christopher George Quick Veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom II, Operation New Dawn, 82nd Airborne, Ranger.

Genres: Science Fiction, Space Opera

215 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 13, 2018

About the author

Chris is a husband, father, veteran, and avid fisherman. He was worn many hats and past professions include: platoon medic, personal trainer, day trader, banker, and a sales trainer who pretends to be a plumber.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea why I picked this up, but I bought it printed through Amazon & I don't regret it at all. It was different. It read as if it was part of a known world, perhaps a really well done game world or existing trilogy the way the world was slowly fleshed out. The author wrote it as if I should already be familiar with it & yet never lost me, only intrigued me more.

In some ways, it read a bit like Starship Troopers or Armor. Not a bug war since they were miners, but a similar universal span & some equipment. The main character (not really a hero, although likable enough) believed in the system since that's all he knew & it wasn't bad for him. There are enough clues there for the reader to realize he's kind of naive, though.

I don't want to say more or I'll spoil a great ride. Highly recommended.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

The opening, “In this new age where bombs are so powerful they are meaningless" should define f-bombs as meaningless because there are so many that it adulturates the content to an almost comical point.

There are 154 iterations of the word, "fuck."

"We looked like a bunch of cherry-fucks… which we were."

"If you want to play fuck-fuck games, we can do that too."

"Holy fuck and a half, is that all?"

"Auto-Cab, I will screen-fuck you with a magnet.”

Some of the language used in this book is quite good too. If the author revised the cursing, I'm sure a book like this could be marketed to teenagers.

[Laz the Sailor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a quirky story. Told from a single POV of an average guy just trying to do his time and get out. Most of the action happens around him and to him - he doesn't really make choices that change things.

The voice is very interesting. There are some internal monologues that are very funny, and some of the dialog is wacky too. I enjoyed the words.

But otherwise, it's just a shaggy dog story, wandering around the universe, stumbling over hints and clues. It's all an overlong prelude to the real story, which is pending. I might read it out of curiosity.

[Tala Burlaza · Rating 5 out of 5]

A campy and timely sci-fi read

Planetfall Origins is a fun, campy read set in a dystopian future. Very light and playful in tone—It’s definitely not a hard sci-fi (which I appreciated). Definitely recommend giving it a go. The chapter structure is almost episodic, making the story very binge-able. By the end I was fully engrossed in Shepard’s world, not knowing who to trust and eager to see what would come of the rag-tag team of miners. Looking forward to the next installment!

[Debra Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Purch Amazon Feb 17, 2018
Planetfall Origins by Christopher George Quick
Genres: Sci-Fi
4.75 Stars

I took points off for a couple of typo/editing errors (which there were VERY few of). However, by the time you get your copy those may be gone.
The author saw my Kindle notes and actually went in to correct the ones I had highlighted! So color me IMPRESSED!

I hadn't planned on reading this so soon. I had just downloaded it and had a different book on my mind.
I decided to take a quick gander at the preface.
It had me hooked. I had to see where this story was going.

Unlike a lot of SF, this one actually has intelligent and plausible substance to it.
Who the Alliance is and how they came about, the technology, the world build and the various characters are very well defined.

The main character is a young man named Shepard who has just joined the 'Mining Corps'.

The Mining Corps is actually military based. So it starts with him in a futuristic boot camp. Little does he realize that everything in his world is going to change drastically.

I highly recommend this story to everyone that enjoys SF.

This one is exceptionally well written, intriguing and bizarrely reasonable.

Unlike a lot of SF, it actually makes sense.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a debut novel, thus while I rank it as two-star, l add one star for trying. The story is a more or less usual space opera military SF with not enough voice of its own. Maybe it will improve in later volumes.
After wars were banned on Earth, people shifted to space where they met mysterious allies, called Celestials, who gifted humans with some high tech often without divulging its inner working. One of the Earth groups, the North American Alliance forms the Mining Corps, which is an army in all but the name. The protagonist is a member of this Corps, a miner. A first quarter of the novel is filled with word ‘fuck’ to the brim, because it seems that in army you cannot talk without mentioning it every fucking phrase or these dumbfucks will never fucking get you! This is clearly from the author’s life experience.
I’d assume miners should learn mineralogy, geology, work with mining machines, etc. However, here much more info on how they train with plasma rifles and die horribly in tentacles of aliens. Moreover, the author assumptions about mining operations is right from Disney cartoon: miners move to a cave (usually real life miners dig tunnels or strip-mine above ground with giant machines), silently (not to wake up alien horrors, which surprisingly enough also decided to hid in the long natural tunnels) move to mine not an ore or even a vein of specific mineral but a slab of it! Heck, even English dictionary doesn’t link slabs to mining. Slab (in a way related to post-mining related processes) is a length of metal that is rectangular in cross-section used as a starting point to make rolling steel. It would be more natural if these miners started mining slabs from platforms of alien railroad from some steel mill and these aliens tried to stop them.
The slogan of the Mining Corps should be ‘get a shovel and a pike and will dig across galaxies!’. Mining equipment is more primitive than the current Earth equivalents, ‘silent drills’ are of course cool but do you often mine hiding? And ‘galaxies’ plural wasn’t a misspelling – more than once the author tells it plural. Oh, man! Our galaxy alone is a hundred billion stars, do you really need more?! And of course all mining tools are mentioned as an afterthought, your true tool is plasma rifle, which is again strange: all live aliens we meet in book seems non-sentient beasts, but you don’t gas them or nuke them or even artillery barrage them, you go face to face (to die).

[SciFiDo_or_Die · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yep. This is the book I have been hoping to come across. Great first person writing style with lots of interesting thought processes. People feel real, some feel a bit like a tried and true trope, but most are complicated, especially Shepard (the main character). The alien component is fairly unique and the author does a good job with a creepy sort of foreboding regarding their mystery. I agree with a previous review about one thing, there is a lot of swearing. I liked it though, because it either A) is appropriate given the situation or B) it is gawdamn funny.

Overlord above, just read the book. Its binge-able and you burn through pages.

[Thomas Zman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read! Heavy on the military lingo. The story begins with harsh character dialogue but evolves into a more civil tone as situations change. I was very impressed with the craft of the writing; concise editing. The first person narrative worked well. Admittedly, Quick's futuristic glimpse of humanity plays well in this popular genre. There is plenty more adventure to come in this series, as the author alludes to at its end. Readers will be thrilled in discovering yet another high-octane author to satisfy their needs when it comes to cosmic combat. Looking forward to his next book in the series.

[Benjamin Rombough · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a read, a roller coaster leaving me hungry for more.

A totally immersive read that reads as military non-fiction set in a sci-fi universe. Nearly all aspects of the interpersonal interactions the descriptions of mining life and close quarter living could be lifted out of this environment and dropped straight into Kandahar or Basra and apart from some of the more colourful alien life would be totally believable. I suspect some of the author's past life has been literally dropped into these pages.

The worlds are well thought out and crafted with technical descriptions that are based in a believable reality with no real unexplained physics which all in all make this book an absolute page-turner that really left me hungry for more.

(Potential spoilers below this line)
I'm intrigued what direction the series will take as the ending of this book has been left wide open. As others have said, it felt a little rushed in comparison to the earlier stages of the book.

There are people who get upset at the amount of cursing (so much so they will count up how many times the word fuck has been used), this reads as military non-fucking-fiction so there will be a fair amount of swearing as that's how junior ranks tend to speak. These sensitive souls should probably not venture outside of their designated "trigger-free safe space" though.

Please do not let this put you off a fantastic read!

[Buck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good story, well told. I enjoyed it. It's better than other self published first novels I've read. The ending is obviously a lead in to a sequel.

I do have a serious complaint. This book needs the talents of a good editor/proofreader. After I acquired the book, I read a review of it that mentioned typos. I cringed. I put off starting the book for several weeks. I hate typos in a book. I made 43 notes in my Kindle as I read. 43. I wouldn't characterize them so much as typos, but mostly as word misuses or grammatical errors - saying Mara and her, when it should have been Mara and she; saying laying instead of lying; separating sentences with a comma instead of a period - that sort of thing. There were a couple of odd word uses, such as "the droll of captivity." Droll is an adjective meaning amusing. Here it is used as a noun, seeming to mean something other than amusement. These kinds of errors grind my gears when reading a book. Normally I would abandon a book if I encounter too many of these in the early going, but in this case the novel had good reviews (and well deserved) from people whose opinions I value, so I stayed with it. The need for an editor almost cost it a rating star or maybe even two, but I decided that Christopher George Quick deserves all the support he can get. I hope the sequel benefits from having a professional proofreader.

If there are typos or grammatical errors in this review, I apologize. I'm not a professional writer trying to make sales. (I left one or two in just to mess with you.)

[Renata Riva · Rating 3 out of 5]

In “Planetfall Origins” an advanced alien species, the Celestials, lets humanity take advantage of their advanced technology in exchange for labour.

Shepard, the protagonist, works for a mining corporation and travels with his group to different worlds looking for rare minerals. The places they visit are often dangerous and they act as a para-military organization able to defend themselves from the most aggressive alien species. But, at some point, they cross paths with a rebel group convinced that the Celestials want only to exploit humanity.

“Planetfall Origins” was fun to read. Shepard, like his colleagues, is a simple guy who tries to make the best of a difficult situation. He’s not interested in politics or in participating in a revolution, and he’s not a hero fighting for a just cause. He just wants to stay alive, but events push him where he doesn’t want to go.

I preferred the first part of the book, in which we visit alien worlds and the vicious creatures that inhabit them. I also would have liked to see a bit more of the mysterious Celestials, that hardly made any apparition in the story, but, overall, this was an enjoyable and fun read.

[Tim Seabrook · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really good, no holds barred, sci-fi story. Set far into the future after mankind has colonised many worlds, the story revolves around one specific individual who is in the mining corps and the adventures and trials that he has to go through before discovering that not everything that he has believed about the Alliance is true.

The book is well written with life in the mining corps being similar to that of military life and the grunts are pushed through training and sent into every dangerous situation possible in order to retrieve much needed minerals until something comes out of the left field and throws their life and expectations completely out of expected and accepted understandings.

The language is fit for the scenarios our brave band of miners find themselves in. The technology use is explained well and the feelings and emotions give you a good impression of what it could be like if you were in their place.

A great read.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very smoothly crafted story. I blew through the book in a matter of hours. I want more, soon.

[Jerry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just finished reading Planetfall Origins. I have not had good luck reading books that were free on my kindle, and that unlucky streak continues. I guess the old adage is true, you get what you pay for.

The first issue with the book is that Quick is totally in love with the word f**k. Everyone says it. All the time. Hundreds of times in the book. It's just so unnecessary. This quantity of profanity strikes me as lazy writing - an easy way to increase the word count without having to do the hard work of writing believable dialogue. And don't give me the "but it's the military, everyone talks that way." No, they don't. And better authors than Quick have written military yarns with nary an f-bomb in sight (Heinlein, Card, MacLean, etc.).

Secondly, any book I read that utilizes [spoiler alert] time travel or a parallel universe [end spoiler] loses at least one star right off the bat. In my opinion, there is just no way to write a credible story with either of those plot devices. They are often used, as is the case here, as a "get out of jail free" card, appearing just in time to save our heroes, or they introduce plot holes big enough to drive a truck through.

Third, the love interest in the book almost felt forced. It all just happened way too quickly. A couple interactions, and BAM, suddenly love was in the air. The two definitely needed more banter, more time spent together, more *something* for the situation to appear believable.

Finally, there was more than one time in the book where I just had a hard time following exactly what was happening. The descriptions left something to be desired, and I had to read and re-read certain paragraphs and pages over to try and figure out exactly what was happening.

All that being said, the overall story was decent. The pacing was well done, and I thought a number of the characters were fleshed out pretty well the protagonist, Yarbarough, Thompson, Anderson, etc. It made it easy enough to continue reading, even over and above the issues I had with the book.

Not a bad story, but I think one can do better.

---------------
I noticed Amazon and Goodreads have a slightly different meanings to their 5-point scale. I thought it was odd to have a different rating for the same book on two different sites, so I came up with my own scale below. For the record, it is fairly close to Amazon's scale, but allows me to be consistent between the two sites.

5 - Fantastic. Life-altering. Maybe only 25 in a lifetime.
4 - Very good.
3 - Worth your time.
2 - Not very good.
1 - Atrocious

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book starts off good but somewhere around the middle, it just stalls.

It was an OK read, but I was not too impressed. The exciting part (the beginning) is a bit formulaic (young man joins military organization in order to ensure future), and when the book stalls essentially you're stuck waiting for something to happen until finally we come to an anticlimactic end wherin the author leaves the door to a sequel.

Read if you must but don't expect greatness

[George Pettus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Read just a little confusing at first

Was a really different way of presenting this story. But was able to get my head around it and truly enjoyed it wished it was a little longer.

[jim hilligoss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book

Good story line and enough action and plot building to keep you glued in place waiting to see what comes next