Aliens meetsNight of the Living Dead in this Sci-Fi/horror series boxed set. 3 Books. 1000+ pages of pure action, mystery, and mayhem.
Fatal glitches. A corporate cover-up. And something haunting the depths…
People are dying and no one knows why. But the company is covering it up anyway.
Justin is excited to start his new job at an energy mine on a distant planet—until things begin to go wrong. Small things. Annoying glitches in the mining complex's tech.
Enough to aggravate him. Enough to notice a connection.
When the first miner dies from a tech-related accident, Justin can no longer turn a blind eye. But the mine's brass doesn't want him digging for answers even though something from the mine's past is lurking beneath the surface...
...and it wants blood.
Don't miss the special edition boxed set of this creepy, visceral Sci-Fi tale of tech gone bad.
At the age of nine, Ben Wolf slayed his first dragon. As the dragon perished, it bequeathed a measure of its power to Ben. It told him, "You now have the ability to lie more creatively than any other being on this planet--except for politicians. Use this power wisely." The dragon died with one final puff of smoke from its lungs, but Ben Wolf lived on. For years, Ben honed his craft. At the age of twelve, he lied to his sister about having thrown darts at a poster of her favorite boy band. At the age of sixteen, he lied to a policeman who'd pulled him over for speeding, and it got him out of a ticket. At the age of eighteen, he lied to himself about what a good decision it was to go to Bible college and major in Pastoral Studies (that one has come back to haunt him several times). Given the unique power he'd inherited from the dying dragon, Ben Wolf had expected his life to look very different from how it did when he turned twenty-three. Then the dragon's words regarding his power returned to him: "Use this power wisely." The truth was, Ben hadn't been using the magnificent power wisely. He'd been using it for personal gain, and to dig himself out of bad situations (or, in the case of Bible college, to get himself into them). So he asked himself, "What would be a wise way to use this power?" At that very moment, a bus drove past the street in front of him. On its side was emblazoned the phrase, "You should write a novel!" Having graduated from Bible college a year earlier, Ben took it as a divine message. What's more, he'd already written one novel at that point, and he'd enjoyed it, so he figured he might as well write a few more. That was 2009. Now, more than ten years later, Ben has written north of ten books, including an award-winning children's book and an award-winning novel. Awards are great, but what Ben has found even more reassuring is the consistently great feedback he's gotten from readers. They've raved about his work and told him he was the best, most creative liar they'd ever heard of. So now Ben is on the cusp of making serious headway with his lying skills. His debut fantasy saga, the Blood Mercenaries series of dark/epic/sword & sorcery novels, is raking in tons of stellar reviews from readers everywhere. And now you can be a part of his creative lying journey. If you've read Ben Wolf's work, love him as a person, or plain old just think he's a handsome guy (he is, and he is now making it known that it wasn't him who wrote this (but it was actually him)), then please review his books here and on Amazon.com. Ben, who we swear didn't write this, thanks you.
The Ghost Mine *** Pretty much a basic story with standard tropes similar enough to aliens 2 (just swap mutants for xenomorphs with a few techie references) that there were few surprises. After a very slow start with cookie cutter spacer roughnecks talking smack, the back half of the story is just a long run for your life horror parody with a body count in the top right corner (a la Hot Shots! Part Deux) … complete with macabre details that were so gratuitous as to be humorously entertaining (YMMV). There wasn’t much world building and a complete absence of character development, so the plot is basically just a simple thrill ride with a few easily missed twists toward the end (and a rather corny conclusion). Over all, there was nothing too terrible, but also there was nothing particularly unique or interesting, so with a pretty solid narration, you get just enough that you could easily have it playing in the background … tuning in now and again to check on where you are in the fairly predicable plot.
The Ghost Pact ** After surviving the disaster of the “Ghost Mine,” Justin moves on to mining asteroids instead of planetary shaft mines … only he takes with him a shiny new prosthetic arm and the ghost of his best friend (Keontae). Before long, the scenery changes to a colony ship where Justin continues to show off his ability to find trouble anywhere. As with the previous book, the world building is pretty limited (basically a modern western world view grafted onto a very simple sci-fi space adventure). Unfortunately. we get a slow build-up while the story takes a promenade through Triad territory in the space station/ark for several chapters before we get even a glimmer of plot. I am sure there was a point to that little segue, I just can’t figure out what it was … but at least now we have a direction (and something of a mystery). And that is when the Corporate Big Bad shows up with an absolutely unbelievable lack of any accountability to anybody with a new and very deadly “asset” that starts the inevitable run for your life stage of the story. Over all it is a simple story with stereotypes and tropes stitched together with a touch of deus ex machina that requires a boat load of suspending disbelief that makes it difficult to connect with anything (characters or world). However, if you can just let it all go and roll with it, you do get some solid entertainment that would give the A Team a run for the money.
The Ghost Plague * Coming into the final stretch, this is only nominally book three of the trilogy, picking up the story right where the last book ended with all the same characters and bad guys and the same run for your life plot line with nothing in particular resolved from book 2 … just an added hazard of a self-inflicted tech plague turning humans into zombies lurking in the background … and we have officially entered into competition with superhero comic books, complete with its own giant, blue super soldier villain aka Vesh (I’m being literal). Queue the Space Ninjas (seriously … they’re in there). Unfortunately this style is not one of my favored genres, so the entertainment value started to bleed out here as the sophomoric bluff and bluster characteristic of the nearly all of the character dialogue started to grind on the nerves. There are a few surprises with shifting alliances that don’t really add much to the over all story. Overall it was an exhausting wild ride for Mr Toad and I was happy when it was over.
I was given this free advance review/listener copy (ARC) audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
I originally read The Ghost Mine in mid-2021. At the time, I thought it was a decent sci-fi adventure. It wasn't the most vivid writing, but the beginning and end are very strong and there were a couple of pleasing twists. That remains more or less the verdict on the second and third books in the trilogy.
Our hero, Justin Barclay, has fled from a satanic mine as it’s destroyed at the end of volume 1, and is about to meet and ultimately lose a love interest: the enigmatic, ethically challenged, morally stunted, good kissing scientist, Hallie. Along the way, he’ll need tech ghost Keontae’s help to overcome a cartoonish but deadly cast of villains, while acquiring a crew of his own in Ghost Pact and Ghost Plague.
There are some funny notes here:
Oh no. Was it… hippies? Couldn’t be. They had their own planet now, and they were strictly forbidden from leaving it. Not that they could’ve left anyway; unless it dealt with marijuana, they were notoriously inept when it came to advanced sciences.
Ouch!
“Make fun of me all you want, but it’s gonna happen. Mark my words.” “‘Mark my words?’ What are you, a medieval baron? No one says that anymore.” “Well, I just did.” Justin smirked. “So mark ’em, and mark ’em well.”
The story line is entertaining but ultimately shallow. The PG-13 romance between Justin and the book's resident scientist whose college classmates voted her most like to be convicted of crimes against humanity was cute, in a tortured way:
But he couldn’t reconcile how she’d put all of their lives at risk in the process—not to mention the tens of thousands of people still on the Nidus—the Settlement-Class Colonizer they were aboard. She’d insisted there was no other way, but was that really true?
(That would be one of those new-fangled 'rhetorical' questions, for the record.)
Hallie’s actions continued to grate against him, too. While he couldn’t deny his feelings for her, he also couldn’t deny the consequences of her decision. But if they could take out the hive, maybe this would all go away. Maybe there’d be something for the two of them on the other side of this, after all.
(Ok, so spoiler alert: no, no there's not. Although in a weird way, it's not entirely un-uplifting. It does set up Justin for a perpetual bromance with his bud from the mine, though. Read it all and see.)
Stars off for overusing my least favorite word, "smirk." This shortcut away from better descriptions appeared in one or another guise 65 times in 1233 pages according to Kindle's search function. That's too many. Wolf lays it on too thick with distinctly 20th/21st century ethnic stereotypes which wear very thin after a few hundred pages. The rest of the books were fairly average in terms of keeping me immersed in the story, and the general development and quality of the characters and plot.
Still fun, but would have been improved by writing which was a little crisper or more disciplined.
Kind of a science-fiction horror that Ben Wolf written and have done so with a passion full of imagination, doing all this with a great penmanship ! Tech Ghost is a sci-fi thriller series that delivers a captivating and suspenseful story of a group of miners who encounter a ghostly menace in a distant mine. The series has well-developed characters that you care about and root for. The writing style is simple and straightforward, which makes it easy to follow and enjoy.
Joe Hempel have narrated each character perfectly creating one hell of an audiobook with his voice.
I would recommend this series to anyone who loves sci-fi and horror and wants a fun and exciting read !!!