LINES OF DEPARTURE by Marko Kloos

Narrated by Luke Daniels

…..Top Notch Performance by Daniels

Things are looking increasingly bleak for mankind and Andrew Grayson in this sequel to TERMS OF ENLISTMENT. Marcos Kloos is attempting to give us a space opera with a sense of authenticity—no mean feat for a work of Science Fiction set largely in outer space. As a result this book series has a lot of military attention to detail. It also has a lot of military personnel. Their gung-ho lingo and gruff matter-of-fact banter are the highlights of this series. This book is every bit as good as the first, and is a fine example of a tightly plotted story. I will leave you to discover the story for yourselves.

Luke Daniels gives a top level performance. He places a tremendous amount of emotion into his performance. I greatly enjoyed his effort in bringing every dialog scene to life. This is a kind of one man show where the actor plays all the parts. The amazing thing is that oftentimes it seems like a cast of voice actors are on stage—but no—Luke Daniels does them all himself. His portrayal of the female characters is particularly good to my ear. Somehow he manages to mimic the female vocal cords with a superb sense of pacing and inflection and manages to avoid the all too common sense I get from some other narrators of a two-hundred pound man in drag imitating a woman’s voice in falsetto. When this book came out I went back and listened to the first book again not only to refresh my memory of the story but to relive Luke Daniels’ performance. If all narrators were as competent as Daniels we would have a an explosion of new audiobook listeners who, after listening to just their first audiobook, would be instantly convinced of the beauty of the medium.