I was shocked to start audio book 15 of the Silver Ships novel and to not hear Grover Gardner.
After a little research I found out (From the authors web page) that Grover Gardner is no longer available to record the Silver Ships books and they are now handled by Susanna Burney. My limited understanding with audio book production is that authors can listen to narrators before they approve them for their book. Why then, Mr. Jucha approved Susanna Burney for this task is beyond me.
The narrator has large shoes to fill, and seems to want to bring her own interpretation to the books, and that's fine. However, it doesn't seem that she listened to any of the previous books, as her pronunciation is off, a fair bit.
I gave this book 2 stars mainly for the audio book narrator. My only complaint with the story is there is too many characters. Silver Ships novels tend towards a few antagonists and a familiar team of protagonists, maybe with 1 or 2 thrown in. This had really only 1 antagonist and a few too many protagonists.
The issue with this, is mainly because of poor narration. The narrator, Susanna Burney, does almost no differentiation between characters. It's already jarring to hear all of our main characters with different voices, but then add that they have the same voice and it becomes hard to follow, at times. The novels also seem to be grooming Jess to be the new Alex, and while that may be a good thing in the long run, he needs to have a significant character arc before he would be worth carrying the series on his shoulders.
So, the story is good. It is standard Silver Ships fare. It ticks all the boxes I've come to expect from these novels and keeps me coming back for more. I was very, very disappointing with the narrator. The narrator from the Pyreans series, Nicole Poole, would have been an obvious choice. She did a fantastic job. Her characters were all different, she did male and female voices well, she had a good rhythm, she would have been a perfect fit to replace Grover Gardner. Unfortunately, we got a narrator that didn't, differentiate voices, didn't do male/female voices, changed pronunciations, and generally didn't treat the series with the respect it deserved. This is why I gave this audio book 2 stars.