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Vienna Salvatori #2
Vienna Series 1
Three brand new adventures for glamorous bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori.
1.1 Dead Drop by Mark Wright
Dwarfed by the burning star of the Hyspero system, two devastating battle fleets face each other across the stars. On one side, the Dyarid Primary Vanguard, commanded by Admiral Salaron aboard the starship Custodian. On the other, a Chtzin battle cluster.
Bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori’s latest assignment brings her aboard the Custodian – but completing her mission and earning some poldaks is the easy bit. When all hell breaks loose with the Chtzin and the Custodian is left crippled and plunging towards the sun, a simple assignment turns into a battle for survival for the galaxy’s deadliest assassin.
1.2 Bad Faith by Nev Fountain
Vienna Salvatori has seen the light.
Time was, if you lost everything, at least you still had your faith – but not any more. Faith stealing is the latest commodity to light up the criminal underworld – extract somebody’s faith and sell it to the highest bidder.
On the trail of a faith stealing ring, Vienna Salvatori comes into the orbit of the charismatic Bax Spendlove, spiritual leader of the Church of New Wonderment, a breakaway sect of the Church of Old Wonderment. Bax has an important mission for his latest convert – and Vienna is a willing disciple.
But when Bax’s followers start to be murdered, it seems Vienna isn’t the only killer keeping the faith…
1.3 Deathworld by Jonathan Morris
The planet Mercator. Twenty trained assassins enter a game arena, armed only with their wits to compete against each other in a harsh environment. Twenty killers go in. One comes out.
Amongst the killers is Vienna Salvatori. This is the moment she has trained her whole life for, honing her skills as an assassin to become the best in the galaxy.
As the killers are wiped out one by one, Vienna fights on in the hope of finally learning the truth about her past. In the last battle, only one can be the last assassin standing.
1.1 Dead Drop by Mark Wright
Dwarfed by the burning star of the Hyspero system, two devastating battle fleets face each other across the stars. On one side, the Dyarid Primary Vanguard, commanded by Admiral Salaron aboard the starship Custodian. On the other, a Chtzin battle cluster.
Bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori’s latest assignment brings her aboard the Custodian – but completing her mission and earning some poldaks is the easy bit. When all hell breaks loose with the Chtzin and the Custodian is left crippled and plunging towards the sun, a simple assignment turns into a battle for survival for the galaxy’s deadliest assassin.
1.2 Bad Faith by Nev Fountain
Vienna Salvatori has seen the light.
Time was, if you lost everything, at least you still had your faith – but not any more. Faith stealing is the latest commodity to light up the criminal underworld – extract somebody’s faith and sell it to the highest bidder.
On the trail of a faith stealing ring, Vienna Salvatori comes into the orbit of the charismatic Bax Spendlove, spiritual leader of the Church of New Wonderment, a breakaway sect of the Church of Old Wonderment. Bax has an important mission for his latest convert – and Vienna is a willing disciple.
But when Bax’s followers start to be murdered, it seems Vienna isn’t the only killer keeping the faith…
1.3 Deathworld by Jonathan Morris
The planet Mercator. Twenty trained assassins enter a game arena, armed only with their wits to compete against each other in a harsh environment. Twenty killers go in. One comes out.
Amongst the killers is Vienna Salvatori. This is the moment she has trained her whole life for, honing her skills as an assassin to become the best in the galaxy.
As the killers are wiped out one by one, Vienna fights on in the hope of finally learning the truth about her past. In the last battle, only one can be the last assassin standing.
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First published February 2, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 12, 2018
Following a successful pilot episode, the glamorous interstellar bounty hunter receives a mini-series of 3 hour-long episodes.
* Dead Drop - The first story sees Vienna's latest assassination mission taking her to a huge military starship conducting an operation against telepathic alien foes. The bulk of the story concerns her attempts to get off the ship again after it becomes crippled in battle. It's a sort of disaster movie in space, with the clock ticking down to the ship's destruction, as well as themes of alien mind-control. Unfortunately, it doesn't work terribly well, and it's never really as tense as it would like. The admiral commanding the fleet feels rather flat, and it's difficult to care about any of the characters other than Vienna herself. There also seem to be a number of inconsistencies in the pl0t, particularly concerning how effective the telepathy is supposed to be. Something of a disappointment after the strength of the pilot episode. 3 stars.
* Bad Faith - The grim tone of the first story is replaced by a much more light-hearted one in the second. This is a satire on religion, poking particular fun on those modern sects that seem more interested in money than genuine spirituality. Vienna becomes embroiled in such a cult, and its schism with its founding church, as well as a plan by crustacean aliens to siphon off the faith of humans and sell it to the wealthy disenchanted. There's a murder mystery, too, although there's never much doubt about the identity of the killer. The story moves along at a good clip, and, as in the pilot episode, this time there are some decent twists as the memories and perception of some of the key characters come into question. 5 stars.
* Deathworld - In some respects, this doesn't start very promisingly, with Vienna apparently returning to her homeworld to take part in a to-the-death contest against other trained assassins. But all is very much not as it seems, as we discover in a series of flashbacks following up on the events of the previous episode. Even more so than its predecessor, this is an unreliable narrator story, making good use of the memory-altering technology introduced in the pilot episode. Significantly, we also discover Vienna's own backstory, and how and why she became a hired killer. As a result, it's much stronger than its premise initially suggests, while leaving questions unanswered, and ending on a cliffhanger that presumably leads into the second season. 5 stars.
This averages out to 4.33 stars, let down by the relative weakness of the first episode, but otherwise well worth a listen if you like twisty plots that question the perception of reality.
* Dead Drop - The first story sees Vienna's latest assassination mission taking her to a huge military starship conducting an operation against telepathic alien foes. The bulk of the story concerns her attempts to get off the ship again after it becomes crippled in battle. It's a sort of disaster movie in space, with the clock ticking down to the ship's destruction, as well as themes of alien mind-control. Unfortunately, it doesn't work terribly well, and it's never really as tense as it would like. The admiral commanding the fleet feels rather flat, and it's difficult to care about any of the characters other than Vienna herself. There also seem to be a number of inconsistencies in the pl0t, particularly concerning how effective the telepathy is supposed to be. Something of a disappointment after the strength of the pilot episode. 3 stars.
* Bad Faith - The grim tone of the first story is replaced by a much more light-hearted one in the second. This is a satire on religion, poking particular fun on those modern sects that seem more interested in money than genuine spirituality. Vienna becomes embroiled in such a cult, and its schism with its founding church, as well as a plan by crustacean aliens to siphon off the faith of humans and sell it to the wealthy disenchanted. There's a murder mystery, too, although there's never much doubt about the identity of the killer. The story moves along at a good clip, and, as in the pilot episode, this time there are some decent twists as the memories and perception of some of the key characters come into question. 5 stars.
* Deathworld - In some respects, this doesn't start very promisingly, with Vienna apparently returning to her homeworld to take part in a to-the-death contest against other trained assassins. But all is very much not as it seems, as we discover in a series of flashbacks following up on the events of the previous episode. Even more so than its predecessor, this is an unreliable narrator story, making good use of the memory-altering technology introduced in the pilot episode. Significantly, we also discover Vienna's own backstory, and how and why she became a hired killer. As a result, it's much stronger than its premise initially suggests, while leaving questions unanswered, and ending on a cliffhanger that presumably leads into the second season. 5 stars.
This averages out to 4.33 stars, let down by the relative weakness of the first episode, but otherwise well worth a listen if you like twisty plots that question the perception of reality.
April 11, 2021
This box set follows the events of Vienna: The Memory Box.
1.1 Dead Drop by Mark Wright - A thrilling start to this series. This is kind of a mash-up of Star Trek, Starship Troopers and a disaster akin to The Poseidon Adventure all with our protagonist, bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori, adding some sci-fi/noir elements. And the start of a larger mystery begins to unfold. Well performed and solid production values make this a ton of entertaining fun.
1.2 Bad Faith by Nev Fountain - Well, it certainly illustrates the hypocrisy of organized religion. But I just wasn’t draw into like previous Vienna adventures. Still, it does feature a wonderful performance by Frazer Hines, so that’s worth at least a star. And another clue about the loose mystery from the previous tale.
1.3 Deathworld by Jonathan Morris - And now we’re into the realm of cyberpunk cliches? This one is all about questioning reality, questioning memory and questioning identity. On one hand this is wonderful stuff, but unfortunately here it just comes across as narrative reboots. The listener is left with questioning whether we’ve been listening to “real” stories, or just fabricated “narrative” for the character that never really happened to the character at all. Like those episodes of a TV series or an issue of a comic book that turn out the end to have never really happened at all, from the character’s point of view. This ends up being very frustrating for the reader, viewer, listener. As a narrative plot device this might work once, but it just ends up becoming annoying and frustrating when it happens again and again, repeatedly in the same story.
I’m left hoping that this was just a way to reboot the concept so that Vienna can become a more “heroic” character. But if volume two consists of much of the same gimmicky and trickery, I’m afraid I’ll just be annoyed and frustrated with this series.
1.1 Dead Drop by Mark Wright - A thrilling start to this series. This is kind of a mash-up of Star Trek, Starship Troopers and a disaster akin to The Poseidon Adventure all with our protagonist, bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori, adding some sci-fi/noir elements. And the start of a larger mystery begins to unfold. Well performed and solid production values make this a ton of entertaining fun.
1.2 Bad Faith by Nev Fountain - Well, it certainly illustrates the hypocrisy of organized religion. But I just wasn’t draw into like previous Vienna adventures. Still, it does feature a wonderful performance by Frazer Hines, so that’s worth at least a star. And another clue about the loose mystery from the previous tale.
1.3 Deathworld by Jonathan Morris - And now we’re into the realm of cyberpunk cliches? This one is all about questioning reality, questioning memory and questioning identity. On one hand this is wonderful stuff, but unfortunately here it just comes across as narrative reboots. The listener is left with questioning whether we’ve been listening to “real” stories, or just fabricated “narrative” for the character that never really happened to the character at all. Like those episodes of a TV series or an issue of a comic book that turn out the end to have never really happened at all, from the character’s point of view. This ends up being very frustrating for the reader, viewer, listener. As a narrative plot device this might work once, but it just ends up becoming annoying and frustrating when it happens again and again, repeatedly in the same story.
I’m left hoping that this was just a way to reboot the concept so that Vienna can become a more “heroic” character. But if volume two consists of much of the same gimmicky and trickery, I’m afraid I’ll just be annoyed and frustrated with this series.
May 19, 2020
Vienna tracks down a killer while doing 2 other hit jobs.
February 27, 2024
I think the middle chapter was my favorite.
October 20, 2025
full cast
found on Spotify
found on Spotify
January 1, 2016
Loved the twist. Need season 2 now to find out what happens next.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews