After the passage of two decades, the Omnians discovered a second, critical clue about the Nua’ll, humankind’s enemy, while investigating Celus-4, the home world of the intelligent, canine-like aliens, the Dischnya.
This striking discovery, combined with the final broadcast of the Nua’ll sphere at Libre, prior to its detonation, gave Alex Racine and company the means to narrow the search for the Nua’ll home world.
Alex has a consuming desire to locate the point of origin of the Nua’ll before another gigantic sphere arrives to destroy more colonies. The first sphere’s incursion into the Confederation burned billions of humans to ash.
Six scout ships are constructed by the Omnians and crewed by SADEs, self-aware digital entities, to search the stars along a narrow path defined by the two clues.
During its search, a scout ship, the Vivian, is captured by an alien warship in a faraway system, the SADEs dub Vinium. The two ships, locked tightly together in a form of electronic warfare, achieve an impasse.
The scout ship calls for help, and Alex Racine receives the strange message. According to the SADEs, the aliens aboard the warship appear to be plant people.
Rescuing the scout ship presents Alex and his companions the opportunity to meet the plant people, the Vinians, on their home world. It leads the Omnians to one more incredible discovery about the Nua’ll, which, unfortunately, proves Alex’s worst fears.
From my early years to the present, books have been a refuge. They’ve fueled my imagination. I’ve traveled to faraway places and met aliens with Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Herbert, and Le Guin. I’ve explored historical events with Michener and Clavell, and I played spy with Ludlum and Fleming.
There’s no doubt that the early sci-fi masters influenced the writing of my first two series, The Silver Ships and Pyreans. I crafted my stories to give readers intimate views of my characters, who wrestle with the challenges of living in space and inhabiting alien worlds.
Life is rarely easy for these characters, who encounter aliens and calamities, but they persist and flourish. I revel in examining humankind’s will to survive. Not everyone plays fair or exhibits concern for other beings, but that’s another aspect of humans and aliens that I investigate.
My stories offer hope for humans today about what they might accomplish tomorrow far from our home world. Throughout my books, humans exhibit a will to persevere, without detriment to the vast majority of others.
Readers have been generous with their comments, which they’ve left on Amazon and Goodreads for others to review. I truly enjoy what I do, and I’m pleased to read how my stories have positively affected many readers’ lives.
If you’ve read my books, please consider posting a review on Amazon and Goodreads for every book, even a short one. Reviews attract other readers and are a great help to indie authors, such as me.
The Silver Ships novels have reached Amazon’s coveted #1 and #2 Best-Selling Sci-Fi book, multiple times, in the science fiction categories of first contact, space opera, and alien invasion.
Alex Racine and the Omnians are still hunting for the Nu’all. An Omnian scout ship has been captured by a ship from a star system called Vinium. The ship contains a new life form and Racine attempts to communicate with the plant-based life forms.
The book is well written. I have been following the series from the beginning; this is book ten. The characters are now like old friends to me. I continue to be fascinated by the SADE (Self-Aware Digital Entities. Each of the alien species has been intriguing. The book contains some action, humor, curiosity and a love of exploration. I cannot wait for the next book in the series.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is just over fourteen hours. Grover Gardener does a super job narrating the series. Gardener is one of my favorite narrators. He has won so many awards over the years. One was Best Voice of the Century in 1999 and another was 2005 Publishers Weekly Audiobook Narrator of the Year.
Alex Racine and his group of Omnians are out after the Nua’ll, a race of beings that appears to be set on destroying every civilization in the galaxy. They have already fought and destroyed once Nua’ll mothership and just now finding out that there might be covert drones planted in every system known to man and more. These drones are silently watching and recording everything in these star systems and reporting back to the Nua’ll. In this way, the Nua’ll will know when a civilization is getting too close to their technology level and becoming a threat. They then send out one of their motherships to destroy that civilization.
The Omnians are going to stop this ruthless destruction if they can. They have followed a trail of a Nua’ll mothership to another star system called Vinium where on of the Omnian’s scout ships have been captured by a Vinium ship. While the Vinium ship can’t access the Omnian ship, they have shut it down. The Omnians have likewise gotten control of the Vinium ship and shut it’s systems down so they are both now stationary in orbit. Alex Racine and his fleet have now arrived at Vinium and are going to attempt to rescue his scout ship and crew.
They find an interesting new alien species inhabiting the other ship and inhabiting this star system. Initially, communicating with this new species is difficult since they appear to be plant-based life forms. Yes, we’re dealing with talking plants. Actually, they don’t really talk like humans, but they have method of communicating that takes the Omnian SADEs a while to figure out.
While cruising through this system, the Omnians notice numerous pieces of materials floating in the Vinium star system. An analysis determined that these were pieces of a Nua’ll defender ship. So, the Vinian’s must have had contact with a Nua’ll ship and some how driven it away. But, a close study of the ship that captured the Omnian scout ship shows that it has very little armament and is not very powerful.
So now Alex has an entire new system to explore and examine. He intends to find a way to communicate with this new alien species and find out the story behind the destroyed Nua’ll sphere. How was it done and what happened to the mothership. The information he gathers here send the Omians on another far greater adventure that they had anticipated.
Alex also comes to the conclusion that the Nua’ll drones cannot be left in the star systems in which humans reside so he needs to do something about them. It also appears that these drones will not just sit and be captured. Some can and will cause a great explosion which he doesn’t foresee in his first capture attempt.
Later, the data about these drones and their placement give some indication of where the Nua’ll might possibly be coming from. Does Alex and his small fleet dare to follow that path and confront the Nua’ll. Just who are the Nua’ll and why are they doing what they’re doing.
Not all these questions get answered in this book, but it looks like they will eventually since this is not the end of the series. Coming in 2018 is a new book, “The Nua’ll”. I can’t hardly wait for it.
When I look back on this book I realised that not a lot happened, but it still held my interest right until the end. I had thought the series was beginning to ‘slip’ a little, but the ‘whole feel’ of this story was much closer to the earlier books in the series.
The epic series continues to get increasingly engaging, and the pace quickens as the threat intensifies. Jucha manages the rare trick of ramping up the scope, without losing the soul or sacrificing believability - and the stories are the better for it.
As much as I love this series and in a way would want more and more of it, Vinium felt wrong unlike the nine books before, there was to many unneeded words Don’t get me wrong I still love this series but I truly believe that this book could have been just as good if not better as a 10 hours audiobook, 14 hours contained a lot of unneeded parts which did nothing to add to the story.
Even so I still have no problem recommending this audiobook.
When I started reading this series it was for quick entertainment at the time with no intention of reading the next book in the series. When I was done with the first book I couldn't wait to see what Alex and the Meridians and the rest would do next. This book doesn't disappoint. Solving problems or sending people in the right direction to solve problems is what Alex does best. I am anxious to see how the problem of the Nua'll will be solved.
The last 14 hour silver ships book went on and on and I felt it wasn't going to end. This was not the case for this book, however, and the time flew by.
The one mistake I did notice was that it is mentioned that the confederation has been around for "7 millennia", when it's been 7 centuries.
*** spoilers***
Once again, it follows a similar formula of beings who just want to get along, and need Alex to make sure it happens. Although this plays a very small part of the book.
While I expected this book to be all about the plant people, they played a very small role in the book. Not as small as the Dishnia home world (excuse the spelling if it's incorrect, I've only heard the word not seen it written), but only maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the book. The Sades picked up the language quickly, Alex got the info he wanted and got out of there. How they missed saying "make like a tree and leaf" I'll never know...
I will say this, it was never considered that Julian wearing plant petals and the like, real or fake, would be much the same as an alien decorating themselves in severed arms and legs, I would assume.
Something else not considered was that when they cornered a sphere, and it fled to an unprobed system, that it could be a home world place, with no need of probes, and it could be a trap.
There was generally alot of things that happened that I saw consequences to, that never panned into anything, but the fact that no one in the book considered to be a factor, shows a lack of overall thought of the strategy.
As well, I want to mention what terrible bunch of parents that Alex and Rene are. Their son is 16ish years old, seems to have been raised by his grandparents quite a bit and overall neglected. And not only did his parents move away, to another solar system and left him behind, they show no real interest in seeing him or even comming him. The kid will likely turn into a serial killer at this rate.
Don't get me wrong, he was an annoying brat in Celus-5, but he's not my kid, so I don't have to love him.
However, over all a good book. Interesting and enjoyable, but I was disappointed in the lack of story progression. More of a stop gap to how things progress into the next book, where I suspect the real action is.
The book was good to me. Although the title of the book is Vinium, that species occupied only a small portion of the book. And it was never clear to me how the SADE's and humans communicated with the species. Alex and crew accomplished their goal in visiting that planet. They found leads to the Nu'all's home world.
The book was a good read, except for me at various points there were a lot of people and SADE's in the conversation and it was hard at times to determine/remember who they were and what planet they were from. It was a problem for me because I had read the first four or five books in this series about a year ago and didn't remember the details of people and planets. I probably would not have had that problem if I had read the beginning of the series more recently.
The ending of the book leads very well into the next book. I am hoping that it is the last in the series, but its possible that there may be two or even three more books in this series.
This volume of the silver ships saga covers light years of distance and years of time. The introductions for this new race seems forced, how the flower people developed a technological space flight capable society seems far fetched. For myself this was the low point in the story, and was over quickly for being the book cover. Alex and Renee’s child also seems to be a disposable character, and as such does not fit into the morals and values expressed by the main characters. I wonder if the growing complexity of the Naulla will take away from the solid base laid in the first 5 volumes......time will tell.
Building on the universe and cast of species characters and capabilities, this feels like the patchiest but in the final quarter delivers a very interesting twist that shakes the foundations of the series and is likely to set the direction for many of the upcoming books.
It doesn"t disappoint but with tighter plotlines preceding this was a bit distracted in the run up to what really becomes an excellent addition to the series.
Friends re-emerge but some sections feel overlong and might have needed a little more visual or dynamic description to keep the passages more engaging.
Alex and the SADEs keep finding new civilizations and Species while chasing the Nuall sphere
Excellent book where the action and tension grows. It capture me from the beginning and I couldn't stop until I was done reading this book. This is a great series and this is so far the best and most interesting. I find interesting how in sync is Alex Racine with his SADES friends, sometimes makes me question if Alex is a SADE or he is controlled by a SADE. The entire plant based specie is completely surreal but so interesting.
Scott Jucha has managed to recapture the sense of excitement and adventure of the original Sliver Ships novels with Vinium. He manages to touch on all the world's and most of the characters in a tour de force novel that launches Alex and Renee on a mission to find and deal with the Nu'al forces that threaten humanity and their allies. I really enjoyed this book. It flowed for me from beginning to end.
The Silver Ships series is one of my favorites, and I eagerly await each new release. This one is special, and a shift in the story as Alex and friends go from defense to offense, and change their tactics for new races and old...
I couldn't really give it a fair review without giving away too much, but I can definitely recommend you read it - and the whole series if you've missed any of it...
I can't wait for the next book to come out. If you like space opera books, then you'll like this book. This book also has A.I.'s through out the book that integrate into the human culture. This makes the book more interesting. I would recommend to anyone that reads this book to read all the other books in this series too, they were all great books too.
Each of our favorite characters continue to develop into new pieces to the survival puzzle.
New worlds and creatures add to the fun as Alex and friends go on the aggressive approach to protecting their part I'd the universe. Creative twists and turns keep their new adventures interesting. Keep them coming.
Alex Racine and his compatriots continue in their quest to free civilization from the threat of the Nua'll. In the process they encounter the Ollasso, a species of sentient plants, which might stretch your imagination just a bit. Their main effort is spent tracking the Nua'll and trying to develop a plan to deal with them, when and if they ever meet face to face.
This whole series has been exciting to read. I look forward to each new edition and can't wait to get my hands on it. Then I can't put these books down and I am waiting again. Keep up the great work and keep it exciting as you have to this point. Thank you!
I just love this series. It is a "hope" series to me. The hope that humans can be better. And embrace some not so humans. Although the true humanity of each group i. this series is debatable . Highly recommend
This series keeps getting better with each book. The main characters are always seeming to be discovering something new and exciting. The story doesn't get old and Alex finally discovers where the spheres are located.
I love love love these books I read them free on my kindle but Ive just purchased them on my kindle as an early Christmas gift to myself to read again and again at my leisure. Whilst the next book is written!!!
Lots of exciting happenings in this one. The stage is set for a grand new direction as the universe the Omnians inhabit is further revealed. Looking forward to the next installment.
Every one of these books is an exercise in exploring amazing new worlds and people whether they’re humans, self aware digital entities or plant-based characters.
This universe is expanding and I really like the diversity surrounding Alex, his family and the different groups in his entourage. I am catching up on the books I haven't read in this series. Thanks for the GoodRead.
Wow! Just great. I love this epic story. The amazing part is you continue to bring in new an exciting journeys where the flow is so good that I'm experiencing as it I'm there.
The dominant theme that I likes in this series is that a conflict can be resolved without resorting to all out annihilation war. There's always a way to do it, only if you pay attention
I am not sure what more can be said about a series that keeps you so involved with the characters and the development that they are taking. I would encourage you to keep reading this brilliant writers books and enjoy them as much as I have.
I'm not sure how well thought out the different alien species are in terms of whether their biology works, but it's nice seeing so many different ones, the first contacts. I find myself wishing the books will just continue building up a... united.... federation.... of... you know, lot's of species.
Each book of this series gets more interesting. The plot continues to hold you in it's grip so you cannot put it down and wait with bated breath for the next.