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Prison Ship
He has one to flame out-or simply fade away...
Framed for attempted murder against his superior, Commander-now convict-Jacob Steiner receives one last chance at redemption. As the captain of a Penitentiary Assault Vessel, he'll lead a desperate crew of thieves and murderers behind enemy lines in exchange for their freedom.
Framed for attempted murder against his superior, Commander-now convict-Jacob Steiner receives one last chance at redemption. As the captain of a Penitentiary Assault Vessel, he'll lead a desperate crew of thieves and murderers behind enemy lines in exchange for their freedom.
336 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 21, 2018
"No bars. No cells. No escape." The three phrases on the cover say it all: you're about to get back to the testosterone-laden macho stories of 1980's action movies.
In «Prison Ship», Michael Bowers' debut novel, we meet Commander Jake Steiner, a disgraced United Space Systems officer unjustly thrown in jail for standing against the traitorous Admiral Jamison, who'd sent Jake's warship, the USS Valiant, into a trap. In order to escape from certain assassination in jail, Jake then accepts command of the Penitentiary Assault Vessel, a thirty-year-old warship full of criminals. The P.A.V., latter christened USS Marauder, spearheads a program for using convicts in suicidal missions across the USS border with the separatists of the New Order Empire.
Of course Commander Steiner will have to fight his irascible, mutinous crew, into shape. Of course they're going to overcome impossible missions and, of course, he'll find a way to avenge the crew of the USS Valiant and bring Admiral Jamison to justice. This book is as cheesy as they come. And deliciously so.
One of the author's advantages, to me, is that he doesn't try to spin a unique tale full or literary malabarism. Very early he establishes that Steiner is going to be your typical fallen, tortured hero in the path to redemption and revenge. Don't expect nothing but tasty clichés here. In «Prison Ship», they work.
Actually the book might start a little too steeped into cliché sauce; the characters might take a while to be fleshed out, but if you endure the first fourth of the novel, you'll be rewarded with a promising — and even, dare I say it, compelling — story. Steiner faces constant threat aboard the Marauder, his crew being composed of murderers, brutes, thugs, and thieves, having to prove time and again that he's the most dangerous animal incarcerated aboard the P.A.V. The occasional friendships that arise are surprisingly riveting. I've found myself on the edge of my seat in the many, many — many — action passages.
If I should mention a downside, it's the dream descriptions. I particularly feel detached on dream scenes in any book, comic, or movie, so I quickly read through them to get to the action. Also, Jake's dreams of his pregnant wife dying in a shuttle accident are quite repetitive. I include here the "hallucinations" — in quotes because they're not real hallucinations, but moments when we get too deep inside a character's mind, seeing them reliving life-changing moments. It's boring. Although I have to admit there's a surprising reveal in the last of Jake's reveries about his wife which makes worthwhile plowing through all the tedious dreams and hallucinations.
Also, there's not much "science" in this military sci-fi. You should focus on the military and the fiction part of it.
Being a Bowers' first novel, I can't wait to read his future books, when he's more experienced. «Prison Ship» is brutal, action-packed, simple, and straightforward. If you want your brain to take a vacation from denser Joe Haldemans or Jerry Pournelles, then dig in, soldier!
In «Prison Ship», Michael Bowers' debut novel, we meet Commander Jake Steiner, a disgraced United Space Systems officer unjustly thrown in jail for standing against the traitorous Admiral Jamison, who'd sent Jake's warship, the USS Valiant, into a trap. In order to escape from certain assassination in jail, Jake then accepts command of the Penitentiary Assault Vessel, a thirty-year-old warship full of criminals. The P.A.V., latter christened USS Marauder, spearheads a program for using convicts in suicidal missions across the USS border with the separatists of the New Order Empire.
Of course Commander Steiner will have to fight his irascible, mutinous crew, into shape. Of course they're going to overcome impossible missions and, of course, he'll find a way to avenge the crew of the USS Valiant and bring Admiral Jamison to justice. This book is as cheesy as they come. And deliciously so.
One of the author's advantages, to me, is that he doesn't try to spin a unique tale full or literary malabarism. Very early he establishes that Steiner is going to be your typical fallen, tortured hero in the path to redemption and revenge. Don't expect nothing but tasty clichés here. In «Prison Ship», they work.
Actually the book might start a little too steeped into cliché sauce; the characters might take a while to be fleshed out, but if you endure the first fourth of the novel, you'll be rewarded with a promising — and even, dare I say it, compelling — story. Steiner faces constant threat aboard the Marauder, his crew being composed of murderers, brutes, thugs, and thieves, having to prove time and again that he's the most dangerous animal incarcerated aboard the P.A.V. The occasional friendships that arise are surprisingly riveting. I've found myself on the edge of my seat in the many, many — many — action passages.
If I should mention a downside, it's the dream descriptions. I particularly feel detached on dream scenes in any book, comic, or movie, so I quickly read through them to get to the action. Also, Jake's dreams of his pregnant wife dying in a shuttle accident are quite repetitive. I include here the "hallucinations" — in quotes because they're not real hallucinations, but moments when we get too deep inside a character's mind, seeing them reliving life-changing moments. It's boring. Although I have to admit there's a surprising reveal in the last of Jake's reveries about his wife which makes worthwhile plowing through all the tedious dreams and hallucinations.
Also, there's not much "science" in this military sci-fi. You should focus on the military and the fiction part of it.
Being a Bowers' first novel, I can't wait to read his future books, when he's more experienced. «Prison Ship» is brutal, action-packed, simple, and straightforward. If you want your brain to take a vacation from denser Joe Haldemans or Jerry Pournelles, then dig in, soldier!
February 27, 2015
This was an okay book. I picked it up on a whim at the library. I am glad I only checked it out instead of purchased it. Kinda reminded me of 'dirty dozen' in space, except there are about four dozen inmates as opposed to just twelve. Maybe a sci-fi version of the dirty dozen spliced with the sci-fi version of high noon [like, maybe, outland, or something].
It's war! The galaxy is in flames! Humanity has divided into two groups fighting for supremacy and a third group wanting to stay on the sidelines. The Galactic Civil War has been going on for some time now, and both sides are unsure as to who will ultimately be triumphant! The 'good guys', the 'white hats', have been losing ground lately, much to the consternation of the USS leadership.
The book starts out with the vessel and crew of our hero, Jacob Steiner, facing a deadly ambush. The other vessels their warship was supposed to meet never showed up; instead, they are attacked by a Separatist fleet. Despite nearly escaping, the vessel is destroyed after most of the crew escapes. Our hero then turns up in a prison - he attacked and attempted to murder the admiral who betrayed USS Valiant and killed dear old Captain McKillip. For his failed attempt at righting a grave injustice he is thrown into prison. He is nearly assassinated in prison after being offered command of a secret mission. The failed assassination attempt encourages him to accept command of the prison-vessel-turned-commando-vessel. In order to accept command, he requires two friends of his from prison join him. The crew is trained hard before their first mission, which is a surprising success. However, Steiner doubts the intelligence their mission has acquired; it was too easy, and the information acquired is hard to believe. Tramer [one of Steiner's officers and a former friend turned into a cyborg] offers a suggestion to attack a different target than their list. The new target provides them with phenomenal information to take back to the United Federation of Planets, I mean the Galactic Alliance, I mean the United Star System[s]. For their success, they are utilized in a feint to draw off forces to allow a larger squadron of USS warships to attack a planet to be used as the jumping point of invading the northern portion of the USS. Rick Mason, pilot extraordinaire and prisoner and friend of Steiner, helps the crew capture a Separatist battlecruiser that is drawn away from the target planet. After the success of this mission Steiner is awarded the equivalent of the Medal of Honor [from my understanding]. He is then supposed to perform another top secret mission with his prisoner-crew, but the Evil Admiral Jameson has managed to insert his agents into the crew in order to assassinate the good Captain Steiner and ensure the defeat of the United Star System[s]. After the mutiny occurs, followed by much mayhem, the P.A.V. Marauder is saved by a USS Squadron of battlecruisers and Steiner is awarded another medal [but not his freedom or commission back into the Space Navy - after all, he did attempt to murder an admiral, regardless of his motivation being the salvation of the USS].
There is a lot of shouting in this book. There are entire conversations in which the paragraph ends with '________ shouted.' Are space ships, especially military space ships, exceptionally noisy and this requires loud voices for conversing? And what kind of morons yell at each other when their foes are LITERALLY right around the corner from where they are standing? The yelling occurs on a regular basis, regardless of the ambient noise level[s] as described in the book. Maybe if the characters, I don't know, SCREAMED at each other, or yelled at each other, or something. Anything more than shouting at each other. At least the sentences did not all end in exclamation points!!!!! Or multiple exclamation points to REALLY emphasize a point!!!!!!!!!
We also discover that Jacob Steiner has been mooning over his dead wife for seven to ten years. She died in a shuttle accident [kinda like a cross between an automobile accident and an airplane accident]. It is not until the end of the book when we discover WHY she was on the shuttle. We also discover he was too stupid to realize that one of his fellow officers was madly in love with him from the get-go and remained in love with him for a long, long, long time - until he was smart enough to realize she loved him after his epiphany over how crappy he treated his wife. So perhaps if this turns into a series of books this newly discovered love will be explored further. Moron.
I was surprised at the 'amount' of Christianity in this book. Not that it is overbearing or anything; some of the crew are Christians [which is interesting, considering they are all convicts and came to the faith after their incarceration]. Most of the faith professed in the book is believable, but there are still times when the author seems to take the cop-out of showing Christians as being wimps or whathaveyou. I think the 'funniest' part of the book was when the Captain [Steiner] interrupted a 'church service' because he thought the engineering crew was planning a mutiny. hahahah kinda funny.
I think the author attempted to write a psychological thriller in that Captain Steiner was supposed to be on his guard all the time, wondering who in his crew would make the next attempt on his life. It really did not work, in my opinion. He came across as a paranoid fool suffering fits of suspicious mistrust fueled by his obsessive hunt to weed out future attackers. Between his obsessing about his dead wife and the poorly written attempts at suspenseful scenes, it became kind of boring in parts of the book.
Some of the characters were interesting, and there actually was some character development for Steiner as well as some of the other characters. Nothing profound, per se, but still some development nonetheless.
The villains were all lackluster. Perhaps if the author had not made the stakes so high it would have been a better book [kinda like 'crimson tide' misfired at the end]. You just knew the hero was going to survive; there was very little suspense in the book about his survival when he faced down any kind of danger.
Enough with the dreams about the dead wife! She's dead! We get that you loved her! [or thought you did] We get that you wished you could save her! We get that you wish you could have stopped that shuttle! But, good grief! all of the dream sequences involving Steiner's dead wife became repetitive, irritating, and boring. They really took away from the story.
Despite my negativity in this review, it did hold my interest. I do remember parts of the book that did grab my attention and make it hard to put the book down. But that honestly did not occur until toward the end of the book. It left me feeling like it did not quite reach for the heights for which the author was striving. Overall, I did like the book. The problem is that nothing truly stands out in my mind that I liked the most. There was a lot of psychobabble in the book as well, which did not really add to the narrative. Well, not 'a lot' as in overwhelming, but it did get thick in some spots.
I almost hate to admit it, but I actually enjoyed this book, overall. It was fairly light reading, make no mistake, but I did enjoy it.
It's war! The galaxy is in flames! Humanity has divided into two groups fighting for supremacy and a third group wanting to stay on the sidelines. The Galactic Civil War has been going on for some time now, and both sides are unsure as to who will ultimately be triumphant! The 'good guys', the 'white hats', have been losing ground lately, much to the consternation of the USS leadership.
The book starts out with the vessel and crew of our hero, Jacob Steiner, facing a deadly ambush. The other vessels their warship was supposed to meet never showed up; instead, they are attacked by a Separatist fleet. Despite nearly escaping, the vessel is destroyed after most of the crew escapes. Our hero then turns up in a prison - he attacked and attempted to murder the admiral who betrayed USS Valiant and killed dear old Captain McKillip. For his failed attempt at righting a grave injustice he is thrown into prison. He is nearly assassinated in prison after being offered command of a secret mission. The failed assassination attempt encourages him to accept command of the prison-vessel-turned-commando-vessel. In order to accept command, he requires two friends of his from prison join him. The crew is trained hard before their first mission, which is a surprising success. However, Steiner doubts the intelligence their mission has acquired; it was too easy, and the information acquired is hard to believe. Tramer [one of Steiner's officers and a former friend turned into a cyborg] offers a suggestion to attack a different target than their list. The new target provides them with phenomenal information to take back to the United Federation of Planets, I mean the Galactic Alliance, I mean the United Star System[s]. For their success, they are utilized in a feint to draw off forces to allow a larger squadron of USS warships to attack a planet to be used as the jumping point of invading the northern portion of the USS. Rick Mason, pilot extraordinaire and prisoner and friend of Steiner, helps the crew capture a Separatist battlecruiser that is drawn away from the target planet. After the success of this mission Steiner is awarded the equivalent of the Medal of Honor [from my understanding]. He is then supposed to perform another top secret mission with his prisoner-crew, but the Evil Admiral Jameson has managed to insert his agents into the crew in order to assassinate the good Captain Steiner and ensure the defeat of the United Star System[s]. After the mutiny occurs, followed by much mayhem, the P.A.V. Marauder is saved by a USS Squadron of battlecruisers and Steiner is awarded another medal [but not his freedom or commission back into the Space Navy - after all, he did attempt to murder an admiral, regardless of his motivation being the salvation of the USS].
There is a lot of shouting in this book. There are entire conversations in which the paragraph ends with '________ shouted.' Are space ships, especially military space ships, exceptionally noisy and this requires loud voices for conversing? And what kind of morons yell at each other when their foes are LITERALLY right around the corner from where they are standing? The yelling occurs on a regular basis, regardless of the ambient noise level[s] as described in the book. Maybe if the characters, I don't know, SCREAMED at each other, or yelled at each other, or something. Anything more than shouting at each other. At least the sentences did not all end in exclamation points!!!!! Or multiple exclamation points to REALLY emphasize a point!!!!!!!!!
We also discover that Jacob Steiner has been mooning over his dead wife for seven to ten years. She died in a shuttle accident [kinda like a cross between an automobile accident and an airplane accident]. It is not until the end of the book when we discover WHY she was on the shuttle. We also discover he was too stupid to realize that one of his fellow officers was madly in love with him from the get-go and remained in love with him for a long, long, long time - until he was smart enough to realize she loved him after his epiphany over how crappy he treated his wife. So perhaps if this turns into a series of books this newly discovered love will be explored further. Moron.
I was surprised at the 'amount' of Christianity in this book. Not that it is overbearing or anything; some of the crew are Christians [which is interesting, considering they are all convicts and came to the faith after their incarceration]. Most of the faith professed in the book is believable, but there are still times when the author seems to take the cop-out of showing Christians as being wimps or whathaveyou. I think the 'funniest' part of the book was when the Captain [Steiner] interrupted a 'church service' because he thought the engineering crew was planning a mutiny. hahahah kinda funny.
I think the author attempted to write a psychological thriller in that Captain Steiner was supposed to be on his guard all the time, wondering who in his crew would make the next attempt on his life. It really did not work, in my opinion. He came across as a paranoid fool suffering fits of suspicious mistrust fueled by his obsessive hunt to weed out future attackers. Between his obsessing about his dead wife and the poorly written attempts at suspenseful scenes, it became kind of boring in parts of the book.
Some of the characters were interesting, and there actually was some character development for Steiner as well as some of the other characters. Nothing profound, per se, but still some development nonetheless.
The villains were all lackluster. Perhaps if the author had not made the stakes so high it would have been a better book [kinda like 'crimson tide' misfired at the end]. You just knew the hero was going to survive; there was very little suspense in the book about his survival when he faced down any kind of danger.
Enough with the dreams about the dead wife! She's dead! We get that you loved her! [or thought you did] We get that you wished you could save her! We get that you wish you could have stopped that shuttle! But, good grief! all of the dream sequences involving Steiner's dead wife became repetitive, irritating, and boring. They really took away from the story.
Despite my negativity in this review, it did hold my interest. I do remember parts of the book that did grab my attention and make it hard to put the book down. But that honestly did not occur until toward the end of the book. It left me feeling like it did not quite reach for the heights for which the author was striving. Overall, I did like the book. The problem is that nothing truly stands out in my mind that I liked the most. There was a lot of psychobabble in the book as well, which did not really add to the narrative. Well, not 'a lot' as in overwhelming, but it did get thick in some spots.
I almost hate to admit it, but I actually enjoyed this book, overall. It was fairly light reading, make no mistake, but I did enjoy it.
June 7, 2023
Nice consept and idea. Reasonably well written with good characters and good storyline.
Story flowed well and kept the interest.
Story flowed well and kept the interest.
October 29, 2012
The book I read was Prison Ship by Michael Bowers. What I liked about this book was the ease of understanding what was going on. The language was generally simplistic making it not too hard to read. The story line was very exciting at times and made me want to continue reading which is important to me. What I did not like about this book is that it could've been a bit longer to have a more developed story line. At points of it i wished the author went into more detail and used more descriptive words.
The main characters in this book included Jacob Steiner, Admiral Ralph Jamison, Tramer, Daniels, Mason, and Bricket. Jacob Steiner is the protagonist and is the captain of the new prisoner vessel after being arrested for his attempt to kill the evil Admiral Ralph Jamison the antagonist. So the story continues in this prison ship and Steiner's attempt to get evidence of Jamison being a traitor. Tramer, Daniels, Mason, and Bricket become some of Steiner's only allies upon the ship as they run into many attempts for Steiner's life.
The main characters in this book included Jacob Steiner, Admiral Ralph Jamison, Tramer, Daniels, Mason, and Bricket. Jacob Steiner is the protagonist and is the captain of the new prisoner vessel after being arrested for his attempt to kill the evil Admiral Ralph Jamison the antagonist. So the story continues in this prison ship and Steiner's attempt to get evidence of Jamison being a traitor. Tramer, Daniels, Mason, and Bricket become some of Steiner's only allies upon the ship as they run into many attempts for Steiner's life.
December 5, 2012
This was okay. A good read, but really, can't the main character die? I mean seriously, he has so many near death experiences he should be dead by the end, but no. He lives. How can he live? I really loved this book, and there were most certainly points where the writing was so enthralling I could hardly put the book down, but by the end I was appalled at the shear improbability of it all. Perhaps Bowers was playing with how long the element of surprise would be a surprise. Surprise this character's alive! Oh, guess what, this one too! It just didn't do it for me. In fact, it took away from the novel's beauty.
On the whole, I liked the book well enough. It has an interesting plot, and I loved the characters. I especially thought Tramer was interesting and a real psychological intrigue. I just wish Bowers did less with the "dying" and come back to life and made the feats the main character overcame more realistic.
On the whole, I liked the book well enough. It has an interesting plot, and I loved the characters. I especially thought Tramer was interesting and a real psychological intrigue. I just wish Bowers did less with the "dying" and come back to life and made the feats the main character overcame more realistic.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 20, 2019
Decent book, enjoyable world to explore. Odd thing is how this book is the only one written by the author and this has series material yet to be explored. I wonder who this is a pseudonym for and why they dropped the protect.
March 1, 2013
This book was... alright. 1000 years from now, when aliens descend and check out the planet this won't be on their list of masterpieces.
The authors writing style is odd. When I started reading Prison Ship I kept checking to make sure this wasn't book X in some series. There's a lot of "back story" that it seems like you are just dumped into the middle of.
Over all, if you're looking for a nice quick easy campy book in between reading Reynolds and Hamilton, this is an alright grab (just make sure to get it on sale)
The authors writing style is odd. When I started reading Prison Ship I kept checking to make sure this wasn't book X in some series. There's a lot of "back story" that it seems like you are just dumped into the middle of.
Over all, if you're looking for a nice quick easy campy book in between reading Reynolds and Hamilton, this is an alright grab (just make sure to get it on sale)
November 29, 2015
It's one of those books that it's bad enough to be enjoyable. Bad science, 2D characters and enough WTF moments that you might sprain your neck shaking your head.
Back in the Golden Age of SF this would have been called a pot-boiler.
If I recall correctly, my copy was placed at a Book Crossing drop off point.
Back in the Golden Age of SF this would have been called a pot-boiler.
If I recall correctly, my copy was placed at a Book Crossing drop off point.
April 8, 2011
I can't believe this book ever got published. I honestly think a 9th grade high school student could have written a better novel. I can't understand how an editor could have read the manuscript and approved it for publication.
If I had paid the $7.99 list price for this book I would have been mad. I picked it up for a buck on the clearance rack at Half Price Books and I still feel cheated.
If I had paid the $7.99 list price for this book I would have been mad. I picked it up for a buck on the clearance rack at Half Price Books and I still feel cheated.
March 12, 2013
When you read 'Prison Ship', you are getting exactly what you expect. There is a ship.. in space.. and there are prisoners on it. No new material is presented here, and the story feels pulled from a cheap syfy channel movie, but its enjoyable for what it is.
November 22, 2013
A really underwhelming and poorly executed novel that never quite decided what it wanted to be. Is it a space opera? Is it a prison story? Is it military sci-fi? Is it a redemption story? Who knows and after 328 pages of narrative schizophenia, you don't really care.
December 1, 2011
Decently entertaining whiz bang science fiction.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews