Atoned Audiobook By Steve McHugh cover art

Atoned

The Wardens, Book 1

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Atoned

By: Steve McHugh
Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds
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Civil War tore across the Union Empire, leaving countless dead in its wake.

It was a war started by one man once beloved by the Empire. His betrayal still lingers in the memory of those who lived through it.

Decades later, his son, Felix Drake, is a Warden tasked with both protecting the ruling members of the Union Empire and its Council and bringing those powerful and influential people to justice should they break the law.

Drake protects the very Empire his father sought to destroy.

When two members of a Council family are murdered, Drake and his team investigate, only to uncover corruption, resentment, and yet more death.

As the case deepens, Drake is forced back into a life he'd left long ago, bringing with it the same disdain and anger from the very people he's sworn to protect.

However, he's no longer a helpless child, and the people who try to intimidate him now are about to discover that Drake is so very much his father's son.

©2023 Steve McHugh (P)2024 Podium Audio Adventure Military Science Fiction Space Opera
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have to start off by saying I listened to this book, and I adore audiobooks. I absolutely LOVED the narrator - Tim Gerard Reynolds - and would happily listen to anything he has to read! His voice was just nice to listen to!

This book, however, is not a book I should have listened to. It required a lot of concentration and I got lost in the people and places. I am still not quite sure who everyone was, but I do know I loved Felix Drake. I'm glad I listened to it, as I have been dying to read it for a while. I haven't a scooby of everything that was going on, but I have to say I still really enjoyed it. Bokk was a great character, but it was Felix who stole these how for me. I am going to re-read this one definitely before book 2 comes out as this is such an exciting series. I know it sounds like I am contradicting myself as I don't 100% know the details but I got the gist of what was going on, and I enjoyed it. So much to unpack. That's why I need to give it all my attention next time because I can just tell it's going to be a fav of mine.

I love McHugh's writing! He won me over when I read Those Who Dwell in Darkness and I loved the writing in this. It's the details, there is much detail, and I fear I lost that by listening. The combination of McHugh and Reynolds is spectacular, it's me who was selfish and didn't concentrate.

I loved the banter within the team and the new addition at the end, I can see that is going to be a fun partnership. The world-building is just magic, and I could see the chase for the sniper when we had the panic with Hideo. I could picture the room and everything going on so perfectly, even all the technology that was introduced - some sound fun!!

I am definitely looking forward to the next book - but I think I will do it the justice it deserves and read it!

Fantastic performance!

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Great start of a series. Eagerly waiting for the next one. Drake finding out more of his Fathers past is really interesting,

Excellent start of a new series

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(potential spoilers but a lot of this info gets dropped on you without foreshadow so I wouldn't worry too much )
so, overall I don't think this book is bad just, ok, but it has a LOT of potential it doesn't live up too.

for starters, positives,
I really like the idea of this world, like the whole warden-council-king of stars dynamic is awesome. the tech was cool, and while I wasn't a fan of the whole kinda-magic system I didn't hate it by the end (it just felt shoehorned in)

I really liked Jake and Bok. I thought they were the stars of the show, I liked Jake's backstory of having a dad who was a major resistance general neat. (although that was a tad convoluted)

if you're noticing a lot of "but"s to the positives it's because nothing really sticks 100% however,
the negatives really amount to, Too many characters who are useless to the plot, don't do anything and are really just cool ideas occasionally.


honestly, out of every POV character only Jake does anything of note.(Bok too but he only has a handful of chapters)
now I get that it's a space opera so an enable of characters is needed but I think the only side character that was important was "Rosie" the hacker warden. the rest just got told to go here do that or split up and do something else.

if you get this on sale or a 2 for 1 credit like I did, worth a shot for a background listen, I wouldn't pay a full credit or price for it though. which is a shame. it has its moments.

Many Interesting Ideas with Too many characters!

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I enjoyed this book quite a bit. It takes place 10,000 years after humans have left the Earth and it has an interesting mix of bioengineering, cybernetic augmentation, aliens, and ether manipulation. There are warriors in armor with swords, and others with high tech weapons, synthetic guardians, and telepaths. The banter between the teammates was fun. I liked that the novel followed two paths at first, following a mercenary group and a warden in their separate roles, and then they came together and worked well as a team. Having two teams plus the peripheral characters they interact with makes for a lot of people to keep track of in audio book form, so I did have trouble keeping track of who was who at first. When I got to the third chapter I rewound back to the start of the book and relistened to the first chapters, and after that it all made a lot more sense! I appreciated the way the story's investigation followed a natural path, with the characters starting their investigation of murders, then working their way up the organization from the thugs to the middlemen to the leader.

I really liked Bok (spelling?), the dedicated and deadly synth who really wanted to decorate the house because he was bored. He was awesome! I wanted Councilor Gusen to die pretty quickly after meeting him, and Sabas was a glaringly blatant caricature of evil who enjoyed hurting people.

Reynolds was great as usual, though there were some times when it felt like he wasn't really putting his best into the reading. He's a fantastic narrator, so it felt off when he'd read lines such as: ""Throat was slit," Etomas said sadly." But the line may have been, "I like cheese," Fred said blandly." for all the emotion in his voice.

I'm looking forward to continuing this series!

Bok is the Best Synth

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This missed the mark for me. It rambled a lot and I found my mind wandering...not following the characters and their motivations. The story is too convoluted and kind of zig zags all over the place. Sadly, I kept checking to see how much longer the story was and wanted it to tie up and end with a bang-but no. Some of the performance was a bit over the top too. TGR used to be my favorite performer but it seems his range of voicing has shortened and a few character's voices were quite grating to me. Too bad because I have already bought book 2. I can only hope it gets better...

Hoped for better

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The story was convoluted, I didn't care at all about any of the characters because they weren't developed enough. Just really boring overall. Love TGR, he's the only thing that saved the book.

Narration was the only good part

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the story was good and worth a listen the readers were great as well good job.

great listen

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4.25 Stars ⭐️

I was already a huge fan of Mr. McHugh's, so I didn't really pay too much attention to the summary when I hit the "Buy" button. Once I actually started the book, I had to stop and go find the plot summary because it wasn't taking place in any of the already formed worlds of his existing series. Imagine my surprise when I realized that this was a brand new series - a whole new world - and we were going into space!

We are introduced to Felix Drake, but we aren't really given too much information about him in the beginning. We are told that he is a Warden and that the Warden's are a fairly important enforcement group who investigate crimes affecting the Royal Family or the ruling members of the Union Empire. We begin to learn about the Union Empire- a collection of THOUSANDS of planets under one umbrella with The King of Stars the ruling authority. The setting is very futuristic, with space travel, flying vehicles, starships -the whole works.

And with so many different planets, there are different species of people. There are humans - of which Felix Drake falls under, but we get to see a variety of species - Sarcian, Oreaf, Dreic, etc. Then, to make everything even more interesting, there are certain Humans who have some type of ability to affect aether - another word for having some type of magic. These Humans are called Sages.

So, we begin to learn things slowly. All we know in the beginning is that Felix Drake is a Warden Team Leader, and he is tasked with investigating a murder. The murder however, is important because 2 of the 3 victims are children of Counselor's (think Senators) and Drake surprises everyone when he lets them know that he knew these 2 victims. That he actually grew up with them before leaving the planet at 16 years of age. Granted, it has been decades, but this opens the door to all of us starting to find out who Felix Drake really is. Top that off with a very interesting storyline and we are off to the races.

I actually really enjoyed this book. Yes, it is the first book so we did have to deal with the building of the world, but it is done nicely. There is also a great group of secondary characters - both on Felix's Warden Team, and there are also bad guys galore. There is an overarching storyline that begins to come together later in the timeline, but we get to follow along as Felix tries to figure out what the heck is going on and who is trying to kill the members of the Royal Family.

This book ties up some of the plot lines, but it still leaves several issues wide open. We've learned WHO the bad guy/gal is, but that person is still out there somewhere. We haven't learned the WHY yet, so there are still many unanswered questions that will hopefully be answered in the next book.

Honestly, I really liked Felix as a MMC, but my favorite character is Bokk - he's a Synth with an actual personality. What's a Synth you ask? Well, you need to read the book to find out. I especially LOVED getting chapters in Bokk's POV. That was too cool.

So, now I'm invested in another open series from Mr. McHugh and happy for it. Add to this the fact that it is narrated by Tim Gerard Reynolds and I'm completely on board.

Can't wait for his next book - in which ever series he puts out.

Great start to this new series!

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I like the narrator but the story was hella boring. fifteen word minimum is dumb

I really wanted to like it

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