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Lost Starship #16
The Lost Nebula
This may be Victory’s eeriest voyage yet as the starship plunges into a bizarre nebula of weird compacted gases. They’re hunting for Valerie Noonan, last seen at the destroyed Adok homeworld searching for survivors.
The nebula holds dark secrets, ones that fight back with mass hypnosis and heavy lasers, seeking the crew’s enslavement and worse. Maddox desperately needs his new intuitive sense and fighting skills as he negotiates the treacherous space reefs, alien deceit and sinister technology. And he risks everything for what his AI companion Galyan desires most.
THE LOST NEBULA is book 16 in the Lost Starship series, a star-spanning saga of deadly space war and planetary battles as told by millions-bestselling author Vaughn Heppner.
The nebula holds dark secrets, ones that fight back with mass hypnosis and heavy lasers, seeking the crew’s enslavement and worse. Maddox desperately needs his new intuitive sense and fighting skills as he negotiates the treacherous space reefs, alien deceit and sinister technology. And he risks everything for what his AI companion Galyan desires most.
THE LOST NEBULA is book 16 in the Lost Starship series, a star-spanning saga of deadly space war and planetary battles as told by millions-bestselling author Vaughn Heppner.
- GenresScience FictionAudiobook
469 pages, Paperback
Published June 4, 2022
226 people are currently reading
69 people want to read
About the author
Vaughn Heppner
147 books569 followersYou can visit Vaughn at www.vaughnheppner.com
I was born in Canada and remember as a small boy crawling in my snow-fort. I closed my eyes, and when I tried to open them, they were frozen shut. I didn't panic, but wiped away the ice crystals, unglued my eyes and kept on building my tunnel. Those were great days! I moved to Central California before seventh grade and couldn't believe I lived in a land where oranges grew on trees and you could pick grapes from the vine.
I used to wonder what I wanted to do with my life, what kind of work specifically. I was miserable not knowing and bordering on desperate. Then one day a friend gave me his typewriter. I began working on a novel. A different person told me it was much easier on a computer, so I bought one and began getting up at 4:30 A.M. each morning before work, writing for three hours. My eyes were unglued once again as the pang of misery left my gut. I knew exactly what I wanted to do: write. So now that's what I do, I write, and write, and write, and I love it.
I was born in Canada and remember as a small boy crawling in my snow-fort. I closed my eyes, and when I tried to open them, they were frozen shut. I didn't panic, but wiped away the ice crystals, unglued my eyes and kept on building my tunnel. Those were great days! I moved to Central California before seventh grade and couldn't believe I lived in a land where oranges grew on trees and you could pick grapes from the vine.
I used to wonder what I wanted to do with my life, what kind of work specifically. I was miserable not knowing and bordering on desperate. Then one day a friend gave me his typewriter. I began working on a novel. A different person told me it was much easier on a computer, so I bought one and began getting up at 4:30 A.M. each morning before work, writing for three hours. My eyes were unglued once again as the pang of misery left my gut. I knew exactly what I wanted to do: write. So now that's what I do, I write, and write, and write, and I love it.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
July 17, 2022
16 books, no more
Calling people retarded, shoving Christianity down our throat, and pushing socialism as the main enemy. No thanks, it smacks of Fox News. This will be my last of the series.
Good luck VH, I enjoyed many of your previous books. I hope you get your groove back.
Calling people retarded, shoving Christianity down our throat, and pushing socialism as the main enemy. No thanks, it smacks of Fox News. This will be my last of the series.
Good luck VH, I enjoyed many of your previous books. I hope you get your groove back.
July 23, 2022
Sad...sad...sad.
VH is definitely a born-again-christian...
Stop imposing your outdated views of christianity upon others, that is despicable.
Calling out Meta is "his woman!" is so 1950, it's not even funny.
The series was fun to read in the beginning but now... abysmal.
Thisnwas the last book I'm reading from VH.
Dude, you were good, too bad you lost touch with what makes a good story.
VH is definitely a born-again-christian...
Stop imposing your outdated views of christianity upon others, that is despicable.
Calling out Meta is "his woman!" is so 1950, it's not even funny.
The series was fun to read in the beginning but now... abysmal.
Thisnwas the last book I'm reading from VH.
Dude, you were good, too bad you lost touch with what makes a good story.
December 9, 2022
Yeah, I'm done with this stuff.
Captain Maddox slowly turning into a bible thumping Christian who replaces technology with mystical powers that clearly come from "god".
Valery relegated to "Hysterical woman who cannot function unless she has plastic surgery"
Meta relegated to "Hysterical mother who should stay at home and care for child"
Something clearly happened to the author in recent years... and not for the better.
Farewell Commonwealth
Captain Maddox slowly turning into a bible thumping Christian who replaces technology with mystical powers that clearly come from "god".
Valery relegated to "Hysterical woman who cannot function unless she has plastic surgery"
Meta relegated to "Hysterical mother who should stay at home and care for child"
Something clearly happened to the author in recent years... and not for the better.
Farewell Commonwealth
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 29, 2024
great story. love this series
I love and look forward to each and every release. Somehow I skipped or missed this book and knew that I’d missed it based off of some of the comments in the next book. Idk how that happened but,…oh well. It’s exciting story and especially so for Galyan but also rather sad for multiple reasons.
I gave the book 4 stars (first time ever, I think, for this series) because of the way I feel things were construed, forced, obviously manipulated in the writing to fulfill a need—to find the Adok’s but with a diabolical twist. I thought the premise to be genius but I simply feel the writing was less than subtle, highly motivated to have certain nefarious details and outcomes. Words, actions, contemplation & most of all assumptions and rush to judgements were all extremely out of character, especially given they’d just left a bad situation where they’d had the premise of these same issues and multiple members of the staff were either reminded or did the reminding of the need for assessment, accurate intelligence, in order to accurately assess the situation before acting. IMO that didn’t happen and we were force fed what was needed and the subtlety and acuity went right out the window. But again, just my opinion. It does happen to be one of the things I most despise in writing though, other than the absence of professional editing, (lol). I know what great writers these two are & I’m one of many of their huge fans but hopefully we won’t see this kind of obvious forced data feeding and storyline manipulation again. It’s kind of tragic, given the amount of time Galyan has waited and wanted this outcome. Again, the ideas in this portion are cool & I feel this in itself coukd have been a major storyline in a book of its own with action, much like the Futon/Unity scenario by perhaps taking a shuttle back to Earth to get the fleet to help with the battle, freeing all of the Adoks but with lots of intrigue, deception, and military genius in order to accomplish the impossible; like Maddox does all the time,
Anyway, great story with more enemies to see in the future and potential Allie’s too.
I love and look forward to each and every release. Somehow I skipped or missed this book and knew that I’d missed it based off of some of the comments in the next book. Idk how that happened but,…oh well. It’s exciting story and especially so for Galyan but also rather sad for multiple reasons.
I gave the book 4 stars (first time ever, I think, for this series) because of the way I feel things were construed, forced, obviously manipulated in the writing to fulfill a need—to find the Adok’s but with a diabolical twist. I thought the premise to be genius but I simply feel the writing was less than subtle, highly motivated to have certain nefarious details and outcomes. Words, actions, contemplation & most of all assumptions and rush to judgements were all extremely out of character, especially given they’d just left a bad situation where they’d had the premise of these same issues and multiple members of the staff were either reminded or did the reminding of the need for assessment, accurate intelligence, in order to accurately assess the situation before acting. IMO that didn’t happen and we were force fed what was needed and the subtlety and acuity went right out the window. But again, just my opinion. It does happen to be one of the things I most despise in writing though, other than the absence of professional editing, (lol). I know what great writers these two are & I’m one of many of their huge fans but hopefully we won’t see this kind of obvious forced data feeding and storyline manipulation again. It’s kind of tragic, given the amount of time Galyan has waited and wanted this outcome. Again, the ideas in this portion are cool & I feel this in itself coukd have been a major storyline in a book of its own with action, much like the Futon/Unity scenario by perhaps taking a shuttle back to Earth to get the fleet to help with the battle, freeing all of the Adoks but with lots of intrigue, deception, and military genius in order to accomplish the impossible; like Maddox does all the time,
Anyway, great story with more enemies to see in the future and potential Allie’s too.
December 1, 2022
At some point I had thought Vaughn Heppner had tired of his swashbuckling hero Captain Maddox. Not anymore. In "The Lost Nebula," the 16th in the Lost Starship series, Heppner romps the accelerator and doesn't really ease up. The Crowder folks return, but they're just the first of a fascinating series of encounters that test Maddox and his crew on the starship Victory. The opening scene involves a threat to Maddox's family and a come-to-Jesus with his wife, Meta, when Maddox must deal with the threat. She wants him to retire and spend more time with the family, especially tiny daughter Jewel. But somebody wanted Maddox dead. The search takes them beyond the new planet where the Crowder people have been marooned and into the Glenna Nebula. And there the adventure really begins. One of the best things about Heppner is his ability to use his characters to diagnose and investigate threats. Mostly they tackle bad actors interested in wiping out the human race. In Nebula, the threats are more diverse: assassins, runaway Karl Marx fans and bloodthirsty artificial intelligence. I didn't take many breaks while reading this one. It consumed me, and I'm still thinking about it, regretting I can't open a new chapter.
August 6, 2022
Honestly the series is still interesting but I do have some complaints. Perhaps anything that goes on this long will run into this problem eventually but I'd like to call back to the first book when it was mentioned that the methuselah men's personalities "Calcified" becoming extreme characters of their original personalities as traits slowly become more and more extreme. Riker feels must more cowardly now where once he was just cautious, Maddox feels over bearing and controlling where once he just felt confident and forthright, Valarie seems neurotic and a bit goofy where once she was just naïve. Perhaps most egregious is the sudden and profound turn to religion. The books took this turn few years back, but now its nearly all encompassing. At one point Maddox was spiritual but a realist seeing himself and the ultimate author of his own destiny, but now he seems to beg god to intervene at least once every 3 chapters. I could forgive that if it had been a natural growth but it feels more like the author had a sudden religion change and decided to self insert that aspect onto his world. Ill keep reading for now but honestly the issues are really making the books less enjoyable.
August 27, 2022
Another great adventure with Maddox and crew. It felt like this book really kept moving and covered a lot of ground. A fun adventure, an easy read to enjoy at the end of a long day to turn my brain off.
However, each book in this series the author lately seems to continuously add more and more religion and his personal political beliefs. It's like the author wants to jam in some of his own political and personal views and it gets smashed in so awkwardly it really hurts. I feel like 1 or 2 books ago there was a passage where the author broke the 3rd wall to justify using the word "retard" and then it keeps coming up again and again in the books where it's really not needed. There is the anti-socialism bend in this book, and the main character suddenly becoming religious recently and now pushing his deism on other characters in this book was real weird.
I almost had to put the book down to go read other reviews to double check myself, a lot of... "Uhm, what?! Did I read that right, wtf?".
However, each book in this series the author lately seems to continuously add more and more religion and his personal political beliefs. It's like the author wants to jam in some of his own political and personal views and it gets smashed in so awkwardly it really hurts. I feel like 1 or 2 books ago there was a passage where the author broke the 3rd wall to justify using the word "retard" and then it keeps coming up again and again in the books where it's really not needed. There is the anti-socialism bend in this book, and the main character suddenly becoming religious recently and now pushing his deism on other characters in this book was real weird.
I almost had to put the book down to go read other reviews to double check myself, a lot of... "Uhm, what?! Did I read that right, wtf?".
October 4, 2022
Liked the book started a bit slow
I gave 4 stars because to me it started rather slow. Took a bit to get into the story. I was not totally immersed in the story. Almost went back to the other book I was reading glad I didn’t.
I think the Adok should get used to Galvan and build ships along with the commonwealth to go back and destroy the evil AIs. It would take more ships But it would be a good way for them to get used Gaylan and the humans and adok to each other. It would be good to build blocks in Galvan so the others couldn’t break into Gaylan but have him able to reverse it and get stuff into their systems. They should go after the AIs then after the Unity. Get the adok to help them and they have Christmas Day and they exchange systems to get the adoks up to their fighting best.
I gave 4 stars because to me it started rather slow. Took a bit to get into the story. I was not totally immersed in the story. Almost went back to the other book I was reading glad I didn’t.
I think the Adok should get used to Galvan and build ships along with the commonwealth to go back and destroy the evil AIs. It would take more ships But it would be a good way for them to get used Gaylan and the humans and adok to each other. It would be good to build blocks in Galvan so the others couldn’t break into Gaylan but have him able to reverse it and get stuff into their systems. They should go after the AIs then after the Unity. Get the adok to help them and they have Christmas Day and they exchange systems to get the adoks up to their fighting best.
June 10, 2022
Another solid title
I read lots of books, and often times they get weaker and weaker as a series continues, but Vaughn Heppner does a good job of producing quality books even a dozen stories in.
This one leaves a couple open ends, making it interesting to see where the story will take us next.
Looking forward to the next ones when Captain Maddox returns.
I read lots of books, and often times they get weaker and weaker as a series continues, but Vaughn Heppner does a good job of producing quality books even a dozen stories in.
This one leaves a couple open ends, making it interesting to see where the story will take us next.
Looking forward to the next ones when Captain Maddox returns.
September 14, 2024
Great Story Telling
Wonderful character development with characters that come alive and seem to be people you may know... Masterful storytelling on an immense tableau, even the galaxy itself. Plot development is subtle at times and consistently captivating and always a good read.
Wonderful character development with characters that come alive and seem to be people you may know... Masterful storytelling on an immense tableau, even the galaxy itself. Plot development is subtle at times and consistently captivating and always a good read.
October 5, 2025
Captain Maddox, his adventures and his crew are very enguaging and memorable
I had things to do and it was several years since I had read the LOST Series. But when I restarted I was right back with CPT Maddox and his crew. In no time I was back with the characters, the Starship and all the stories deep space action. The Lost excellent reading. Well done again Mr. Heppner.
I had things to do and it was several years since I had read the LOST Series. But when I restarted I was right back with CPT Maddox and his crew. In no time I was back with the characters, the Starship and all the stories deep space action. The Lost excellent reading. Well done again Mr. Heppner.
June 6, 2022
Another great story
This sequel is special In not only did they fi
nd the Adoks but saved them. And then transfered them to the commonwealth of planets. Can't wait for the next book.
This sequel is special In not only did they fi
nd the Adoks but saved them. And then transfered them to the commonwealth of planets. Can't wait for the next book.
June 12, 2022
this is a great Series if you like heroes and villains
Well written Series that carries one through many adventures and keeps developing new characters . I highly recommend it to anyone
Well written Series that carries one through many adventures and keeps developing new characters . I highly recommend it to anyone
June 13, 2022
Getting repetitive
I have enjoyed this series very much, the characters and stories are well thought out and presented. But it is getting a little long in the tooth, as they say. I would like to see the series wrapped up soon.
I have enjoyed this series very much, the characters and stories are well thought out and presented. But it is getting a little long in the tooth, as they say. I would like to see the series wrapped up soon.
June 18, 2022
Another great adventure for Captain Maddox
I am on pins and needles, the Captain's enemies are multiplying. How will he out maneuver them this time? Can't wait for the next book in the series!
I am on pins and needles, the Captain's enemies are multiplying. How will he out maneuver them this time? Can't wait for the next book in the series!
Read
June 21, 2022Hard to put down
This book was a good read. I have read the whole series and will read the next. This like the others has been a pleasure, hard to put down, new characters and story lines keep it fresh. Thank you for Vaughn Harper.
This book was a good read. I have read the whole series and will read the next. This like the others has been a pleasure, hard to put down, new characters and story lines keep it fresh. Thank you for Vaughn Harper.
July 24, 2022
Another win
This is the best of the various continuing series that I follow. One
of the few I read rather than wait for the Audible version to come out, which is probably the highest compliment I can give.
This is the best of the various continuing series that I follow. One
of the few I read rather than wait for the Audible version to come out, which is probably the highest compliment I can give.
July 27, 2022
Space opera
Maddox, Galyan and crew head to deal the Crowder refugees, only to discover the demands were a trap for the Captain. In the process they continue the hunt for surviving Adoks and uncover more evil aliens which pose a potential threat to mankind.
Maddox, Galyan and crew head to deal the Crowder refugees, only to discover the demands were a trap for the Captain. In the process they continue the hunt for surviving Adoks and uncover more evil aliens which pose a potential threat to mankind.
August 11, 2022
Very enjoyable. The story line has now presented many more opportunities for new directions and adventures.
See my comments above. The Adoks should have their own book. The evil Aids should generate many books. Valerie and Kieth could be another series. And so much more!
See my comments above. The Adoks should have their own book. The evil Aids should generate many books. Valerie and Kieth could be another series. And so much more!
October 7, 2022
Love it
Extremely good read and a one of the best series I've read. You read from book 1 on the adventures will grab you and bring closer to the characters, especially Driving Force Gaylan.
Extremely good read and a one of the best series I've read. You read from book 1 on the adventures will grab you and bring closer to the characters, especially Driving Force Gaylan.
January 25, 2024
Always an adventure worth reading
Another book that leaves you wanting more of the story. This book was quite a good read with new characters and situations. Never once has one of Vaughn’s book not failed to entertain. Keep them coming!
Another book that leaves you wanting more of the story. This book was quite a good read with new characters and situations. Never once has one of Vaughn’s book not failed to entertain. Keep them coming!
June 6, 2022
Great read....
I love the lost starship series. Every book is new and thrilling. I love the main characters. I can't wait to see if the story will continue from here.
I love the lost starship series. Every book is new and thrilling. I love the main characters. I can't wait to see if the story will continue from here.
June 8, 2022
Great as always!
I have loved this entire series! All 16 books and can't wait until the next! I'd like to acquire hardcover copies to give my local library.
I have loved this entire series! All 16 books and can't wait until the next! I'd like to acquire hardcover copies to give my local library.
June 13, 2022
Keep it going
Keep it going I'm enjoying this series very very much i can not wait for the next instalment good work Vaughn .
Keep it going I'm enjoying this series very very much i can not wait for the next instalment good work Vaughn .
June 16, 2022
Still going strong
Still good even after 16 volumes. Will surelyt read the next in the series . . . . . .
Still good even after 16 volumes. Will surelyt read the next in the series . . . . . .
June 18, 2022
Great series
Really enjoy all of the Captain Maddox adventures. I hope Maddox takes out Grutch in the next book. This one had a great lead for the next book.
Really enjoy all of the Captain Maddox adventures. I hope Maddox takes out Grutch in the next book. This one had a great lead for the next book.
July 21, 2022
More of the same. Pursue old enemies, find new enemies, defeat enemies, new enemies appear at the end.
July 23, 2022
Enthralling
This series continues to get better and better with greater depth and exciting new elements and aliens! I look forward to many more!
This series continues to get better and better with greater depth and exciting new elements and aliens! I look forward to many more!
August 8, 2022
I feel like the author tried to combine two distinct stories into one narrative, which failed.
And when is this book series going to end? Enough is enough
And when is this book series going to end? Enough is enough
August 13, 2022
good read
I have read most if not all of the books in this series. The story line is interesting and the presentation is compelling. Truely a book that is hard to put down.
I have read most if not all of the books in this series. The story line is interesting and the presentation is compelling. Truely a book that is hard to put down.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews