Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Libre (The Silver Ships Book 2)

Top positive review

A fight against time that had my heart racing!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 3, 2022

Man, Libre was so intense towards the end! I really felt the building sense of urgency, tension and despair as time ticked away. While there's so much to enjoy, the honoring of the elders wisdom and others' sacrifice was heartwarming and breaking. Overall an excellent book and I can't wait to dive into the next! Not really looking forward to annoying politics, but that's part of the game of the less-developed New Terrans still so I'll deal to see where the story goes.

I'm hooked!

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Alphonse Thibodeau

Good but too slow

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 28, 2015

Good but the pace is too slow. The story drags on in non necessary details. Book could have been 100 pages shorter.
Just like the first book plots starts good, then drags in organization details, at some time it feels like reading a project report, then picks up for a couple page then drags again until the end where just like the first the pace gets really fast because the story has to finish and then end abruptly.

After reading the two books I feel like the author really enjoy describing/watching people working and day to day business of a manufacturing plant or something like that. Maybe that's what he did in life?

At the end you feel like after reading 400 pages not much happened, you could resume the entire book to someone in about a minute and they would not miss anything from the story.

So overall interesting story, I wished there was less project management and more story development.
I'll probably get the next one but I don't know, so many books to read and so little time to do it.

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From the United States

K. Westfall

A fight against time that had my heart racing!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 3, 2022

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 15, 2022

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This was yet another enjoyable read in the Silver Ships series. It can be read in two ways. 1 as a quick fun read or 2 looking for the underlying societal commentary and human nature discourse. However you choose to read it you will enjoy it

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JDM

A delightful, Science Fiction read.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 27, 2022

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This book is a science fiction story of an intelligent, independent, creative, brave, and altruistic, person living in another solar system who, by chance, interacts with an Artificial Intelligence with a sense of humor from a severely damaged, disabled, drifting spaceship. It's a fictional scientific story with qualities one can genuinely enjoy and admire.

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Guardsix

How Do You Evacuate an Entire Planet?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 23, 2015

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Second book in the Silver Ships series. I don’t know how to exactly describe these books. They are magnificent writings on the human spirit and what it means to be human. Yes, these are science fiction books. But, they are much more. They should be teaching us how we should be treating each other and even those things we just take for granted. I am amazed at how the writing in these books stirs my emotions. Very few books I have read do it as much as these two books.

In “Libre”, Alex Racine, Admiral Racine and his Family Alexander aboard the starship Rêveur have set out to return his partly Méridian crew back to their home world or at least back to their Confederation. With the defeat and capture of a Silver Ship at the planet Bellamonde, Admiral Racine needs to find some allies in the Confederation to help him make repairs and then go back after the Silver Ships. They know they can be defeated, they just need to have the assets to do so.

The approach the planet Libre hoping to find such allies. It appears that the entire Confederation is in a panic to flee this region of space. The Méridians have no sense of war. They would rather give up all their homes, everything they have built over the centuries instead of fighting. It’s the same on Libre. One faction is true Méridians. They have been hastily building two gigantic city-ships in which they intend to board and flee to some far off reaches of space where the Silver Ships hopefully won’t find them. The other faction on Libre is the Independents. These are the outcast from Méridian society. These people don’t know how to follow the rules, are independent thinkers, and often challenge authority. Their actions go against everything the Méridian society believes in so they have isolated these “troublemakers” to the planet Libre. Fortunately, the Independents are just the kind of people Admiral Racine needs to have for allies.

While originally intending to use the planet as a staging area to build up a vast armada with which to attack the Silver Ships, those plans are abruptly halted when it’s realized that they either have the time to evacuate the planet's population via the city-ships or build war ships. They can’t do both. The SADEs (intelligent shipboard computers) calculate that the Silver Ships will vacate Bellamonde in 90 to 120 days. It will take the humans at least 178 days to have everything ready for both city-ships to depart and reach their FTL exit point safety. And those calculations assume everything is done without error or delays of any kind.

This book will tell you in detail how these New Terrans and their cousins, the Méridians find some common ground to work together for a common goal. It is awfully idealistic, but there are a lot of good people trying to get things done. Even with all their vast efforts, it is realized that a very small number of Librans will have to be left behind. The writing is very humanistic and really covers the tragic impact of their struggles.

I enjoyed this book very, very much. I’m looking forward to the next book in the series, which I understand should be coming in early 2016. I can’t wait.

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Amaxon Customer

What Was in Those Nanite Injections?

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 30, 2015

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Raymond Mortimer once described another protagonist as:
'James Bond is what every man would like to be, and what every woman would like between her sheets.' So, too, is Alex Racine, the hero of book 1. There, he was a 28 year-old prodigy who developed a method of accelerating mineral-rich asteroids toward linkup with buyers back home. Born of prospector parents, he is a self-confident young man from a peaceful planet of colonists. Then he lassoed a ship coasting past and his life changed.
Book 2 poses the question: can he assume the mantle as shrewd Captain of a damaged ship from another planet? Can he return them to tell their tale to people they left behind?
The original survivors and his volunteers dedicate themselves to return and face those Silver Ships, making him their Admiral. While they are less-sophisticated, the 'New Terrans' quickly adopt tools and methods of the visiting Meridiens -and none so fast as Alex- going so far as to mind-meld with the ship's AI. The more he functions like that, the more people (and computers) around him revere his person. Ex:
' You’re a very resourceful human, Admiral. >
< A little ingenuity and a little fortune go a long way, Cordelia. >
< Your modesty does not suit your accomplishments, Admiral. Although, I believe the question is moot. Many others sing your praises for you. >
< That’s always a dangerous song for any individual to hear, Cordelia. > '
Jucha, S. H. (2015-07-06). Libre, A Silver Ships Novel (The Silver Ships Book 2) (p. 130). S. H. Jucha. Kindle Edition.
We know reviewers expect characters to mature during a series. Honor Harrington The Honor of the Queen, Second Edition (Honor Harrington Book 2) could. But Alex's adoption as leader could never make up for his lack of military schooling, which prepared Honor for her increased responsibilities of command. Also, the Space Opera imagery is vague once it starts. Post-action analysis is guesswork of the enemy's motivations. Alex may be Renee's big lovable teddy-bear, but he was a prospector and mathematician, not a tactician. Still, other characters compete for the honor of serving Alex his meals(?). (Two stars)
*********************************************Spoiler Alert*********************************************************
The redeeming plot element of the book is a deadline that must be met- or else. Every effort must be accelerated, and shortcuts taken, if anyone is to escape. The tick of approaching doom is audible in every chapter. You'll wonder if the humans are up to the challenge, or will they fail? (+two stars)
Verdict: uneven characterization but heart-stopping suspense.

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G. Robert Grant

It just gets better and better

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 17, 2022

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I’m late to the game of the Silverships series. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the first two books and am looking forward to the next 18 plus the 4 in the Pyreans adjunct series. The books have exciting fights and wonderful backstories of their characters.

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Mags

Addictive like candy

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 11, 2020

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I hovered between 3 or 4 stars. On the 3-star side, these books have simple plots, equally simple characters (mostly good people), numerous info dumps, and everything, just everything is explained in laborious detail - a bit like Nathan Lowell's books - so things move slowly. I could sum up the entire plot of the first book in a couple of sentences. The MC is heroic in terms of his brilliant strategic thinking; invention of innovative ways to tackle problems; adoption/adaption of new technology (courtesy of the Meridiens) at super-fast speed, way beyond its original purpose; plus he's strong and handsome and of course, he gets the beautiful girl. And all that may be exasperating for readers who like more sophistication/depth in characterisation, Machiavellian plot twists and faster pacing. But these books are very readable (thus 4 stars), I was cheering for the good guys to beat the murderous aliens, and I'm engaged enough to want to buy the next one especially as they end on cliff hangers and they are, so far, relatively inexpensive. I'm going to keep going - I'm on my 3rd - I may burn out along the way...

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Mickey

Surprisingly Good "Second" Book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 9, 2015

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I really like the Oat Opera themes adapted to space and science fiction... the good guys, bad guys, chase, fight, escape to fight again... it's a relaxing few hours of downtime from a busy schedule. Rarely do I find much in the way of uplifting prose or really rich storytelling of the kind that creates a real page turner. Less rare than that is finding characters that you really like; characters that perform reasoned acts of heroics, sort through the effects and after effects, then carry on with the day to day drudge needed to heal and get ready for the next round. In this dime store novel group I almost never find a story thread that makes me choke up or become emotional... I'm a bit of a cranky-cynic-critic when I read (it amuses me).

I read the "Silver Ships" and was delightfully surprised at how good it was. But being me, I was totally ready to handle the disappointment of the "second book lag" found in what I thought was a trilogy in progress. So I purchased Libre without much in the way of expectations, and... wow. This is a GREAT second book, much more than I expected! I was thoroughly entertained and just could not put it down. About half way through I was disappointed at how thin the remaining pages were becoming... I enjoyed reading this so much I was reluctant to approach the end point. I will give a small spoiler alert here... If you don't read Silver Ships, the ending in Libre will not have the desired impact on you - this was a great segue into the next novel; using a little side conflict from the first novel to open a completely new direction for the third. Well done sir, well played. Strongly recommend!

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Terry Bollinger

This is my second or third re-read of the series!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 11, 2022

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I've always particularly enjoyed the early books in the Silver Ships series. I particularly like the development and interactions of the main characters, especially Alex Racine and Julien.

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Dexdox

Bring back the magic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 15, 2015

Verified Purchase

Good follow up book to Silver Ships. I would agree with some of the other reviewers that this novel got a little too tied up in the technical side of things and that dragged down the story. We need to move this shuttle here, pick these people up there, update this production schedule over here..... It may be that all of that needed to be explained to move the eventual storyline along, however the real heart of the first novel was the interpersonal relationships and that wasn't as a prevalent in this novel.

For example Alex and Renee's relationship turned to cardboard, with Renee essentially relegated to bed warmer status. I did like the AI's but I felt they could even have more personality. It did seem like Alex has this magical gift to key into whatever motivates the people or AI's around him...this despite the fact he grew up with practically no social contact.

None of this is a deal killer and I still enjoyed the novel. I just hope we return to some of the wonder of the first.

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