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Star Soldier (Book #1 of the Doom Star Series)
 
 

Star Soldier (Book #1 of the Doom Star Series) [Kindle Edition]

Vaughn Heppner
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

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Product Description

Product Description

It’s survival of the fittest in a brutal war of extinction!

Created in the gene labs as super soldiers, the Highborn decide to replace the obsolete Homo sapiens. They pirate the Doom Stars and capture the Sun Works Ring around Mercury. Now they rain asteroids, orbital fighters and nine-foot tall drop troops onto Earth in a relentless tide of conquest.

Marten Kluge is on the receiving end. Hounded by Thought Police, he lives like an ant in a kilometer-deep city. The invasion frees him from a re-education camp but lands him in the military, fighting for the wrong side.

STAR SOLDIER is the story of techno hell in a merciless war, with too many surprises for any grunt’s sanity. STAR SOLDIER is a full novel, 82,000 words in length by Vaughn Heppner, Writers of the Future winner, Vol. IX.


Excerpt © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

7 AUGUST 2346 A.D.

Father and son floated swiftly, silently, with purpose, through a seldom-used maintenance shaft. They refused to sell their souls to Social Unity. Three years of hiding like rats proved that and culminated tonight. They had just placed thirty-six bombs onto the space habitat’s outer skin and had eleven minutes to go.

Father and son looked nothing alike. Marten Kluge was nineteen, lean and had a blond-haired, handsome face like his mother. He cradled a stubby tangler against his vacc suit and had a high-tech kit on his belt. The old man, Ben Kluge, was massive and hard-eyed, with a needler attached to his silver suit. In the last half hour, he’d killed four men, two with his hands. No one had heard or missed the men so far. The Sun Works Factory circling Mercury was vast beyond any space habitat in the Solar System. The corpses were left to float in dark shafts. Father and son now donned helmets, activated oxygen tanks and opened a hatch for the next phase of the operation.

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Vaughn Heppner
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
When I started reading this novel I was convinced that I was going to write it off as a two star book. The opposing factions are generic and are diametrically opposed in an exaggerated, clichéd manner which robbed me of the sense of belief that they could ever have been 'one nation'. The characters themselves are one dimensional and can come across as wooden at times. Dialog as well is frequently stilted and feels awkward.

The biggest surprise for me then was when I actually really got into the book. The combat scenes were tremendous fun. The space combat not as much as the land combat, it would have been better if the actual physics had been omitted. I felt that the detail detracted from the sense of realism significantly as several concepts put forward are just plain wrong using our current understanding of science. Otherwise I enjoyed it quite a bit in the end. I will be buying the second book in the series and would encourage people who have bought this novel to stick it out to the latter half and give it a chance. It sets up the second book well.

So with that, I am giving it three stars, I would probably have rounded up to three and a half stars had Amazons review system allowed it.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
This book is well written with the main characters well developed. The main character is Marten Kluge who struggles under oppression and over the course of the book develops and finds out more of himself.
Marten Kluge was born around Mercury, within an oppressed society. He and his parents fight to free themselves with Marten ending up in Australia living in an underground city. Martin continually struggles against the system: Thought Police hound him; he lives like an ant and questions, through his actions, those in power. The Highborn attack and conquer the city, freeing Marten from one oppression but lands him in the Highborn military machine - fighting for the wrong side!
For me, the book started well, concentrating on the main character, however I felt the move into explaining the war and the various high commanders on both sides (the Highborn and Earth (communist party called Social Unity)) detracted from the more interesting story of Marten.
If I had not read in the book description that the Highborn were "created in the gene labs as super soldiers" I would not have understood for some time why the Highborn were superior to the standard Homo sapiens. I felt that a little more description around how the Highborn came about would have enhanced the story.
I had to suspend my belief that there could be so much weaponry available to both sides (despite the abundance of raw materials within the asteroids in the Solar System), and the massive preparations for war that the Social Unity party had made - the military preparations seemed to be many orders of magnitude than during our own world's Cold War.
Despite all of the above, the book was enjoyable - the four stars are simply due to my preference in what I want in a story. For those who enjoy the strategy of large, planetary scale wars, then this may well be a page-turner for you.
For Kindle readers: the book is worth the investment in time in reading. There were a few typos that did not detract from the reading (unlike some other Kindle books available currently).
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
There's something about this series and I can't put my finger on it. They read like debut novels, and I suspect that Mister Heppner's not going to improve his writing style any time soon, but that doesn't make them bad stories. Far from it. Isaac Asimov couldn't write for toffee, but he had imagination and wit and that was good enough. Heppner's in a similar boat, his writing's not great, but it's good enough to allow you to forget the slightly clumsy, amateurish prose and just enjoy the story, because story is something that Mister Heppner does very well. There are a lot of rough edges here and the proofreader should be shot, but despite the shortcomings these are reasonably well-crafted stories that are a lot of fun to read. They're like a grown up version of the Saturday morning cartoons, a boys' own adventure series that isn't actually for kids. Give them a try, don't go in expecting the new Iain M. Banks and you won't be disappointed. Heppner deserves to be read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Its the Great Patriotic War on a galactic scale
I came to this title from Heppner's "Invasion Alaska" and just like that title this is no great prize winning piece of writing... Read more
Published 14 days ago by A. Kelly
Rip roaring sci fi
5 stars cos this author is now on my 'buy everything list'.
Well written, straight forward plots but enjoyable. I've read books 1 through 5 in the past week. Eager for more!
Published 4 months ago by P. Fenton
need more and soon!!
Hi, this is my 1st ever reveiw and normally i wouldnt bother but i loved the doom star series so much that i am literally holding my breath in anticipation for the next installment... Read more
Published 7 months ago by juxtaposed
Amazing read
being dyslexic i was always told to read everyday, with a mind that never stops racing i find it hard to get drawn into sotrys, but this series of books sucked me in and i havent... Read more
Published 8 months ago by Da_Riddle_Box
Great Space Opera
I have read the whole series in the last week. Fantastic read. Marten is a great central character......just when you think things can't get any worse...they do! Read more
Published 8 months ago by PhilSuarez
Excellent sci-fi - worthy of SF Masterworks.....?
This series is strong and plausible with a feeling of Arthur C Clarke, Joe Haldeman (Forever War)and Star Wars all mixed in. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Illegitimate Monkey
Very enjoyable adventure played out across our Solar System
Thanks to Kindle I can sample the first chapter of a new SF title; I stumbled across Star Soldier and was hooked. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Simon Harris
Need book 6 ASAP
I don't tend to write reviews, in fact this is my first one, what can I say, bought this book for my kindle on 17/08/2011 and by 05/09/2011 I had finished the fifth one in the... Read more
Published 8 months ago by JMT
Star Soldier and following books
All five of the books so far have been excellent. The first book, Star Soldier does take a bit of time to fully get into but the beginning sets the scene for the rest of the... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Simon
The start of an epic journey!
I bought this book after reading the other reviews. I'm so glad I did. Join Marten Kluge on an epic journey that gets increasingly more fantastic and more compulsive reading with... Read more
Published 10 months ago by J. Nock
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