Galaxy Outlaws Mission Pack 1: Missions 1-4 (Black Ocean: Galaxy Outlaws) Kindle Edition

I discovered J.S. Morin’s fabulous Black Ocean universe through his Mercy for Hire series (which starts with Wayward Saint, a book that was super easy to give 5 stars to). I loved that book only to discover there was an astounding number of predecessor series books. On the one hand I’ve grumbled a bit since I’d missed reading those books when they first cane out. On the other hand, yaay for me as the author has collected those prior series books into a series of “Mission Packs” that I can buy all at once rather than having to purchase each book separately. The first of these is Mission Pack 1 which covers Missions 1-4 (and a double yaay for any reader here as it’s possible save a pretty penny, spending only $9.99 for the Mission Pack vs $15.96 if the individual Mission books were purchased separately). I won’t summarize this as the review would be pages (though the publisher’s blurb does a good job). Instead I will simply note that the lead-off line in the publishing blurb pretty much covers what crucial info is needed: “Science to build a starship. Wizardry to take it past light speed. A crew to give it a soul.” Yup, this is a crazy mashup of sci-fi and fantasy works perfectly. I love Captain Carl Ramsey of the ship Mobius, who has to leave piloting to his ex-wife, the equivalent of engineering (as there is no actual star-drive to travel through the astral space between worlds) to the ship’s wizard (yup, you read that correctly - he does it by magic spell hand gestures) and, oh yes, the chief of security from a predatory species. I had fun just describing that. Now add it in to well-plotted, well-written stories filled with other cool places to go and. people to see (and interact with). Total. Reading. Pleasure. But for the fact that I’m literally dictating this review my husband from my hospital bed I could go on and on with praises - this “Mission Pack” definitely deserves it. Since I can’t do that I will simply note that the collection is most definitely one to read, and it is easy to highly recommend. I’m already starting on the next Mission Pack in this series. Yup, totally addicted and loving it.

This series is a delightful blend of Firefly and Fantasy. The relationships between the crew are real, often funny, and nothing is wasted in building and developing the characters. A flawed leader with an assortment of misanthropes trying to survive in a universe controlled by autocrats and wizards. I read both Mission Pack 1 & 2 in 4 days. It took 4 days because I had to restrain myself from reading them all in one sitting. There are so many possibilities for this series. I hope there will be more.

**** SPOILER ALERT ****I purchased "Black Ocean Mission Pack 1" That contains missions 1-4.5 and was very pleased that I did.This mission pack contains "Salvage Trouble", "A Smuggler's Conscience", "Poets And Piracy", "To Err Is Azrin", and the prequel short story "Guardian Of The Plundered Tomes".Morin did a great job of world building and balancing and maintaining the hybridization in a universe that holds both magic and tech throughout the mission pack.I really enjoyed this humorous, at times, action packed pack of adventures.I look forward to reading further missions.I highly recommend this series.This is my own honest opinion.

Mission Pack 1 is good value. Some interesting ideas, and some engaging stories. The characterization is shallow, and the style is certainly more tell than show, so it's hard to feel much connection with characters. But hey, it's a few hours of reasonable levels of engagement for a couple of bucks. I'm going to try more by this author.Why? Because I almost stopped buying ebooks, because it is so hard to find good ones. And it really costs a lot of money to make mistakes. I've been disappointed too many times by a ten or twelve dollar book from a major publisher that turned out to be unreadable post-preview. The search for good reading really started to hit my pocketbook in a very unsustainable way.In desperation I started surfing the free and cheap stuff, figuring cheap junk is better than expensive junk. And turns out, if you're patient you can find some decent entertainment. Not great art, but brain fodder.One unusual thing for trying to find worthy reading in the self publishing world: obviously ignore the five star reviews because they are all friends family and incentives reviewers.But counterintuitively, while one star reviews are absolutely critical for figuring out if a twelve dollar purchase is safe, for self published books they actually make it harder to find decent reads. Because people holds the books to too high a standard and you can miss some interesting stuff.Free samples are important, and even more important is if the authors are offering long samples or free books or short stories, so you can get a better feel than the first chapters, which most are careful to polish much more than the rest of the books.

The mission stories are the space faring equivalent of Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories. In other words pleasant enough, but never really developing any great drama and never generating enough excitement that means you just can't wait for the next page.The books have numerous opportunities to build to great climaxes but never manage to capture the moment. There are no space battles at all, no great positions of danger, no great moments of pathos.So much goes unexplained, like the background, numbers and capabilities of magic and wizards. No real baddies are developed or allies.If you are looking for holiday read that doesn't require any great concentration and where you could conduct a conversation with your mates at the same time as reading the book then the Mission series will do.If you are looking for gripping space sci-fi stories with maverick teams, then there are numerous better examples.

Just bought this and read the first two. The first is brilliant, heaps of fun and very firefly-esq, the second is a pile of self righteous crap that tries not so subtly to weigh you down with some form of catholic guilt and promote what the religious would see as good morals. I'll give the third book a read but at this point I'm not holding my breath!

Easy to read, a lot of good ideas (many original ones - at least to me). I like my SF to be kind of believable, that is once you've accepted something improbable (eg FTL travel), everything else follows logically. Only gave 4 stars because I felt I had to swallow two or three 'improbabilities' rather than just the one. That said, I'll read more of the series as/when I find them.

Never thought of space being like the ocean but it’s a good analogy. These books are space opera at its best!

have to say , I really enjoyed these books. Nothing too heavy, just good old fashioned story telling. If you liked firefly , enjoy money python or " bottom " , you won't go wrong here. Looking forward to the next set of missions. Well worth a read.