My original Marooned by Veronica Scott audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.
Part of the crew and passengers on a shuttle are suddenly marooned on Dantaralon, a planet where most of the wildlife is poisonous. They were offered an exotic vacation but they are abandoned on a world with multiple life-threatening dangers.
This is the second book by Veronica Scott I read, and in this case I felt that the science fiction setting was more of an excuse than anything else. In fact, the whole story could have been about a ship abandoned on a deserted island and attacked by pirates. There was adventure, there was romance, but I missed the science fiction that I was looking for.
The story started slow and took a lot to build up, just to suddenly end. The book is just under five hours, and I felt that it missed a one or two hours to have a polished end. Not that I wanted the book to be longer, but somehow it felt unbalanced.
The main characters are flight attendant Meg and former Special Forces soldier Red. The secondary characters were flat, and I even missed some development on Meg and Red. We get a bit of their background but just as side notes to the story. The dialogs felt artificial, like the love story in this book. It could be just me, but sudden romances and forever love promises born out of a dare situation are just not realistic, just like the love and sex scenes described in this book. I will not get into details, but believe me, in real life it never happens like this.
Something that makes me cringe is all the damsel in distress thing going on in these books. True that Meg is quite auto-sufficient, but her values are presented in contrast with the ones of the other main female character, presented as the typical damsel in distress, always making mistakes and being generally weak. Red will try to save the women in this book, especially this character that needs to be protected at all costs because she is quite useless. I would have not expected this from a female writer on this century. Meg is very capable, but again, I do not like the idea of using a weak female character to make others shine.
Michel Riffle did a decent job narrating the story, but it took me by surprise that Meg was interpreted by a Mary Fegreus. It could have been okay, but it was just confusing that this was done with just one of the female characters. True that the other women did not have many lines, but this just felt a bit weird. Also, this female narrator interpretation was quite flat, and her speed higher than Riffle, which sounded artificial.
It was an entertaining read that will delight romance lovers. If you are a science fiction reader, this book may not be enough for you.
My name is Elena. Since I was a little child I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I can’t resist a good novel. In 2015, while wait I started to listen to audiobooks and I discovered the pleasure in being able to read while doing my daily tasks, so there’s always an audiobook playing on my phone. If you see me with my Bluetooth headphones on, please be gentle, I get easily startled.
I live with my boyfriend, which I met during my six-year stay in Belgium, four cockatiels, eight lovebirds, and a hamster in Madrid, Spain; and I like to spend my free time knitting and sewing while listening to audiobooks.
