Lt. Reilly 2321:

Lt. Reilly #1

by Matthew O. Duncan

Jack Reilly's luck ran out just before the war did. Released on a medical discharge shortly after the end of the war with the Serkins, he went out into the galaxy looking for a job. Signing onto the Glacier Runner 17, an old and rundown cargo ship, Rielly finds himself working for a clueless captain, mixed-up in an intergalactic conspiracy, on the run from assassins, and involved with two women in relationships that he could only call "complicated".

Fans of Matthew O. Duncan will recognize the universe as the same as from the New Terra Sagas, but this is not a sequel. This is a stand-alone spin-off with new characters, new worlds, and in a different format. Told in the first person from Reilly's perspective, this is a fast-moving, non-stop sci-fi adventure.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Military Fiction, Space Opera, Audiobook

225 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 23, 2020

About the author

Matthew O. Duncan is part of the resurgence of Old School Sci-fi. His books are a mix of Military Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, and Mystery weaved together with non-stop action.

Visit : http://matthewoduncanbooks.com/index....

Reviews

[Tony Hisgett · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story started quite well and there were a few interesting incidents, but the whole main plot wasn’t convincing. There were several occasions when I couldn’t help thinking a situation was just too contrived and bordered on being unbelievable. As for the relationship stuff the author really shouldn't have bothered, at times it was just cringe worthy.

[D. Jensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad but needs editing

It is hard to give books high marks when there are errors with wrong words, misspelled words, punctuation and even getting names mixed up or spelled wrong. Sloppy comes to mind as a descriptor.

Told in the first person, a reader can forgive the misuse of objective case in pronouns and the dangling prepositions; however, the rest lies squarely on Mr. Duncan.

What I can appreciate is that this is not the kid-who-becomes-captain story or the military guns-ablazin' adventure. However, the foundation is weak with all of a sudden the main character becomes embroiled in a conspiracy and the news that Kayla is a storage medium for secret information which comes late in the story. We really have to wonder how much time Mr. Duncan spent plotting his story.

Reilly is a character easy to follow. Kayla is too needy for my tastes, and I haven't decided about Captain Mitchell, though she could use some fleshing out.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a rainy day. It reads fine when you're not wanting to smash your Kindle over the misplaced quotation marks and other basic problems in typography.

[Michelle Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“ Writing had never been a real money maker for me, more of an escape and a dream of one day having million people love my work and seeing stories on the big screen starring Hollywood’s best, yet life gets in the way.” Matthew Duncan

Matthew Duncan has written a brilliant and entertaining science fiction novel that really helps the reader feel involved in the story since he wrote it from a first-person perspective. Matthew wrote Lt Reilly 2321 in 2018. The main character, Jack Reilly, is a good-natured and easily likable character. As I learned more about this character, I felt that he was trying to do the right thing. But, circumstances that he found himself in, really challenged him. He kept true to this virtue and was able to change not only his luck, but also helped stop a civil war from happening.

Jack Reilly has the rank of a 2nd Lieutenant & while fighting the war with Serkins, he becomes injured. Only 3 months before his pension starts, he has to take a medical discharge. His life steers him in becoming an engineer on ships and takes a job on a 17-year-old cargo ship, Glacier Runner. Jack quickly discovers that the Captain is involved in an intergalactic conspiracy. After he leaves the ship and finds himself on a Spaceport at Lion’s Head which is a trading post. In the past, this city was populated with people working in the mines. Currently, people who profit off ships coming to port for fuel & water stopovers or people who have nowhere else to go or who are stranded and can’t afford transportation live there. The real adventure begins when another employee from the Glacier Runner, Kayla, joins him while he is eating at the Lion’s Head. Kayla’s own life experiences have made her resilient to any of the unfortunate events that she finds herself in. She becomes a valuable team player while she and Jack confront the conspiracy that develops against them.

[Lukas Lovas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a bad story :)

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good.

[Diana T-C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a story more for someone who wants to have an inner-noble-hero fantasy with some male sexual fantasy using stereotypical situations (hot room situation, drunk woman situation, only one bed situation, juggling two women situation)

As a person not in the demographic that would find lengthy pondering of how-to-be-noble in various situations with women interesting, I got bored and cringed a bit here and there.

The hero moments were MacGyver type of hand-wavy quick solutions. As science fiction books go, this was not very science fiction, not very military science fiction, it was more of a "Noble Hero" story, with some sexual fantasy stuff and some light mention of planets and space travel and spaceship stuff.

Awkward. But probably a fun read for guys that like to read first-person I-am-a-noble-hero books and have two pretty women at the same time in their fantasy story. The science-fiction is just the setting - this same story could be in the Old West, in New York, in Australia, some island . . .

Narrator was good - probably the reason I finished this - and I knew it was short and was going to be over soon.

[C. Paulin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started skimming much earlier, but I finally DNFed at 58%.

I tried to immerse myself in the narrative. Lieutenant Reilly reminded me of the main character from the Grimm’s War series, which I enjoyed. But my biggest criticism of the story is the prose. The novel could’ve used another round of close line edits.

Take this little nugget for example:

The ship impacted the sandy desert floor with an impact that sent up a half-mile high dust cloud and created a 50-root crater, but there was no fiery explosion.

The writing was simply too bland, to say nothing of the poor grammar and clichés (e.g. “like a deer in headlights”).

Another issue is how every time Lieutenant Reilly met a female character, she seemed to always be blonde, gorgeous, and instantly attracted to him. His relationship with Kyla was icky. Maybe not Lolita icky, but not far off.

Lastly, the narrative was an odd blend of military sci-fi, romance and crime.

Bottomline, I’m glad other people enjoyed Lt. Reilly 2321. It just wasn’t for me.

[Frank Bertino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Read

Jack, a career space fleet lieutenant, was seriously injured at the end of the war, and was given a medical discharge just short of his pension. He is working a job as an engineer on a rundown ship. He is fired for refusing to install a dangerous part on the engines. A beautiful crew mate follows him ashore to convince him to return since he is the only one who can keep the old ship running. They are abandoned as the ship leaves without them. In a bizarre turn of events, they are blamed for the misfortunes of the ship and their struggle for survival ensures. He wrestles with his burgeoning relationship with his beautiful partner. A new wrinkle develops as an attractive Marine Captain gets involved. I like the action, humor, and romance. I look forward to the next book.

[Cheryl Shearer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a worthwhile read ...

I was not a fan of sci-fi until this book. I have been blown away by the way the story unfolds in the space environment with the very human traits of theft and treachery and treason and intrigue and even a little romance. Great story/plot line - and the back stories for the three main characters help draw them together. I like that there are equal numbers of women who are in leadership roles in the story. What I found particularly interesting is the way the author has created a world that is beyond ours, but with vehicles and equipment and lifestyles that are easily described and do not leave you reading page after page of technical descriptions. I could almost picture the various craft and equipment from their simple explanations. I am really looking forward to reading the next Lt. Reilly story.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Duncan, Matthew O. Lt. Reilly 2321. Lt. Reilly No. 1. M.O.B.D., 2020.
I am always a fan of science fiction stories with engineers as main characters. When we first meet Lt. Reilly, he is lamenting that he abandoned a command track at the academy to study engineering. Twenty years down the line, he finds himself, an ex-lieutenant with a badly repaired leg wound, working on a badly maintained civilian freighter. When the captain tells him to install a part that he knows won’t get the ship out of the atmosphere, he quits. As he predicted, the ship crashes on take-off. His captain, who was the first to abandon ship, survives and blames him for the crash. He and his beautiful but emotionally fragile assistant find themselves broke, out of work, and on the run. It is a popcorn read, but the plot moves along at a decent pace. I will read the next one in the series. 3.5 stars.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good sci-fi adventure with side of confused relationships.

I enjoyed this sci-fi adventure. The MC/hero is an engineer which is always good in my opinion. I have a tendency to prefer Main characters with brains that can actually use them. Embedded in this adventure is a bit of an emotional love triangle and a bit of soul searching. All good though. It seems that there is a series here obviously. However there were no major hint as to over arc storylines other than the cliffhanger last sentence. That part was annoying obviously And a few more lines but it certainly cemented people's need for a next book. Fortunately I'm not an early reader and there's already available. So off to enjoy the next space adventure.

[Jc8586 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the story overall and have purchased book two which I haven't read yet. The locations in the book don't really come alive for me. Not enough description built into the dialogue and thoughts. The women characters aren't as realistic as I would like. The women are weak emotionally but then so capable of doing their work and cracking codes and programming computers, and navigating politics stuff. The women come across as very smart, and then very stupid. I love when Lieutenant Riley can fix the machines and keep them working, truly a pleasure to read each time. I'm looking forward to book two, and I hope they plot is less awkward. It is a pleasure to read a Sci-Fi book similar to a style from sci-fi early days years ago.

[Fred Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Working on a junky spaceship wasn't really what he was after. It was a job and unlike the previous 18 years in the military no one is trying to kill him. That cganes quickly after refusing to install a defective part on the space ship he is fit-red and the spaceship takes off and is destroyed.

Soon he is being pursued based on a false claim that he was to blame for the crash.

Add in a fully connected crime syndicate and dodgy military personnel and the adventure is on.

Great characters and story arc will keep you engaged and entertained.

Recommended and I'm looking forward to volume 2 in the series

[Volpot · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I mostly enjoyed this book, despite its shortcomings. The overall story was decent and there was enough action to keep me interested. On the not-so-good side, the grammar was pretty poor with scrambled tenses, poor sentance structure, and repeated confusion between subject and object pronouns. Also not so good was the almost deus ex machina nature of resolving many of the conflict situations in the book, such as some unlikely skill one of the characters had or some thing one had seen or just happened to have in his/her pocket that was just the thing to resolve the dire situation.

[Captain Dunsel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting quandary. The story is nice, light space opera. Simplistic, with many improbabilities, but still fun. The lack of good proofreading, though, makes it jarringly annoying. For example, the frequent use of wrong tenses. Possessive is often used, instead of the correct plural. That is, 'the ship's were docking' instead of 'the ships were docking'. Even MS Office's grammar checker should catch that.
The writer also substitutes homophones for correct terms. For example, a 'steal beam' instead of 'a steel beam'. A spell checker can tell you if a word is correctly spelled, but it can't tell you if that is the right word. For that, the writer needs a decent grammar checker.

[Nancy Browne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The future can be well, complicated.

Ex-military turned engineer for a piece of junk ship. Reilly uses his past skills to maneuver himself and his female companions from trouble at spaceport to planets to stolen ships. Between the three of them they successfully run, hide, and fight their way through the quadrant.

While Reilly is a likable protagonist the author deviates from the plot to exploit women with a stereotypical male views.
Grammatical errors distract the reader, but the story is not compromised.

[Emz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, what an adventure, I wasn’t sure what to expect, due to some of the reviews, but I must admit I reilly enjoyed it. I'm reilly glad I decided to try it. I was especially taken by the moment in the initial paragraphs, where he's hitting a pipe with a wrench. The go-to action for most engineers made me chuckle. I found it quite amusing.  

There wasn’t a lot of action, but the story was compelling and entertaining enough to carry the narrative at a good pace. The bigger conspiracy is revealed towards the end. I think despite its shortcomings; it is a worthwhile read.  

[Merrin Slade · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for action, world building and a really great character. I like Reilly. He reminds me a bit of Reacher, and a little of Uhtred (Of Bebbenburg, of course). All three characters are imperfect but likeable in their own way. It's fun being inside the head of someone completely different to yourself, and it takes a special skill to weave the story. Duncan did this really well in the first Reilly book. I bought the second book, but the emphasis was more on the tech and the plot so didn't grab me as much, still good though.

[Philip Greene · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have to be honest, this book was terribly written. Aside from all the grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes (can't you hire a proofreader?), the characters were thin, cardboard cutouts. One barely gets an idea of what this universe is about. The dialogue is simplistic boring. The plot? As predictable as a book written by a ten-year-old. And the science was barely even given a nod. More than all this, I just felt like the author at times was just going through the motions- could you just try? A little? I'm sure that many enjoyed it, just not me.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly OK

This is an oddly constructed tale, with frequent grammatical and punctuation errors, and some of the least scientific sci-fi I’ve read recently. It could be better with a good editor. The story comes to a stopping point, but not really to an end. There are issues unresolved, threads left unterminated, and while the main characters are OK at the end, the reader is left with questions.

[Beach Bum · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a first in a series, has potential

Characters are interesting, there are 3 main ones and from other reviews expecting some serious complications
None of that materialised is this book but maybe more in the next
Story is interesting, if not gripping, with clever use of tangential skills to get out of the situations they find themselves in
Hoping the 2nd.book is a bit more sci-fi as this one was more spy story set in the future than real sci-fi

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is ok, and starts out nice, but in the end it gets a bit wild and feels more contrived.

Like some others, I do appreciate that the main character is not some young dude coming of age but somebody who has already lived some.

It needs a good editing, not just for the spelling and punctuation errors, but with an editor with whom the author can have a good discussion on the story flow and what is believable and what not.

[Lorraine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see something in this story. There's a solid story and some characters to make this interesting, but I just couldn't get through some of the errors. The character's name switches between Reilly and Riley in the first few chapters, for example. The tenses are inconsistent. The grammar is... spotty. Let an editor go over this book, write up a new version based on that and maybe there's something here. Unfortunately until then, it's a no from me.

[Tom Maxey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is Sci Fi. You would expect a story written about the MC in 2321 would not base a lot of it on his bad knee!!
Many people I know have had arthroscopic knee surgery and or replacements. It’s outpatient! A sorority brother is working for a bio company that has now been approved for taking a patients DNA and creating cartilage like substance that can fix a knee problem and in some cases negate the need for surgery. All this in 2024. What will they be able to do in 2321?

[JT Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

A First Class Space Opera!

Lt. Reilly is one of those guys that knows his stuff and will get the job done by whatever means necessary, even when it means ticking off the CO. When the chips are down and the fat lady is warming up, Reilly will pull a rabbit out of the Captain's hat to pull the team through. Classic hero stuff and a good read despite some slightly sketchy editing. All in all, a book I heartily recommend to any sci-fi buff.

[Raymond Marshall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slightly different kind of space opera.

Very nicely rounded out characters. A different twist on how things work in this future. I'm not sure that having the main character being unable to get at funds that he saved is believable, but it does support some of the plot. A fun read.

[Leslie Baptiste · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast paced, excellent primary and secondary characters.

I enjoyed this book immensely. Not quite a five but definitely a four. Great cast of characters especially the Tennant Riley, wish he would get his leg fixed. The book was fast paced fun quite enjoyable. A good first book in a new series. Very enjoyable.

[Charles · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have to say that this book was a total waste of time. Every incident in the book was more unbelievable than the last. And the bit where the JAG Captain described her encounter with a a bisexual woman to gather information was just brutally awful. I’m happy that this book was part of my Kindle Unlimited subscription. I would have hated it more if I actually spent any real money on it.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

An OK but not great Sci-Fi yarn

I enjoyed, but didn't love this book. It wasn't one of those stories that grabbed my attention to the point of wanting to read it every chance I got. I read it in a few days, and it was, as I said, enjoyable, but not enough to read the other books in this series.

[R Lance · Rating 4 out of 5]

GOOD STORYLINE GREAT CHARACTERS

Not your usual space opera, the characters are real, kinda broken, trying hard with only what they've got. Not the usual hero types you get in these books. These people really involve you, hmm they're real and relatable despite the fact it's sci fiction. Definitely an engrossing story.