Ninth City Burning by J. Patrick Black

Read by Lincoln Hoppe as ‘Jax’, Ryan Gesell as ‘Imway’, Susan Hanfield as ‘Kizabel’, Mike Chamberlain as ‘Vineas’, Ariadne Meyers as ‘Naomi’, Suzanne Elise Freeman as ‘Rae’ and Johnathan McClain as ‘Torro’.

Summary From Goodreads:

We never saw them coming.

Entire cities disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but dust and rubble. When an alien race came to make Earth theirs, they brought with them a weapon we had no way to fight, a universe-altering force known as thelemity. It seemed nothing could stop it—until we discovered we could wield the power too.

Five hundred years later, the Earth is locked in a grinding war of attrition. The talented few capable of bending thelemity to their will are trained in elite military academies, destined for the front lines. Those who refused to support the war have been exiled to the wilds of a ruined Earth.

But the enemy’s tactics are changing, and Earth’s defenders are about to discover this centuries-old war has only just begun. As a terrible new onslaught looms, heroes will rise from unlikely quarters, and fight back.

Confession:

This is epic science fiction at its best.  This story has so much going for it, amazing technology, aliens (maybe?), courageous characters and a little bit of fantasy.  Patrick Black has created a unique world with a very unique type of magic that appears to be based on science.  He explains everything in this world in great detail, sometimes to the detriment of the story.  I found myself at times bogged down by the details and just wanted to get back to the action or the characters story lines.  I enjoyed spending time with the characters,especially Taro, Kizabel and Vinneas. They were all unique and different from one another, but at times I felt overwhelmed by the seven points of view the story is told through.

I started this audio book without realizing how long it really was, (21 hours 24 minutes).  Unfortunately this meant I started it at a time when I was super busy and didn’t have the time to devote to it.  So there were times over the last two and a half weeks where I went a day or two without listening.  This diminished my enjoyment of this book a little bit because it is so dense and full of detail that I often forgot what was going on and some of the characters story lines. I was glad that the decision was made to have more than one reader, someone unique for each character.  It really helped to keep them separated in my head.

Although I enjoyed this audio book, I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it, or if I had listened to it when I was on a long trip. There is just so much detail and new ideas and words to learn that the lag times between listening to it often made me lose the thread of the story. If you are not an avid audiophile I would not recommend this audio book to you, but I would definitely recommend the print book, if you are a science fiction fan.  I am looking forward to the next installment in the series.