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Aliens Among the Stars #1
Whispers of War
War.
An alien war.
The catlike alien asked the humans to fight in an alien war.
Can you believe that?
An alien ship crashed on Earth 5,000 years ago, throwing our solar system into a temporal bubble. No time has passed outside our solar system.
It is now 2030, ten years after a government shutdown that never ended.
A jackal-like alien almost killed Terry Chang. Now he and his friends must venture out into the unknown, where multiple alien races are on the verge of war.
Turns out mythology is not so mythical after all.
An alien war.
The catlike alien asked the humans to fight in an alien war.
Can you believe that?
An alien ship crashed on Earth 5,000 years ago, throwing our solar system into a temporal bubble. No time has passed outside our solar system.
It is now 2030, ten years after a government shutdown that never ended.
A jackal-like alien almost killed Terry Chang. Now he and his friends must venture out into the unknown, where multiple alien races are on the verge of war.
Turns out mythology is not so mythical after all.
244 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2021
85 people are currently reading
364 people want to read
About the author
Sean Bai
2 books27 followersSean has always liked reading and watching science fiction. It feels wonderful seeing the vast universe and all the crazy alien life forms and the thrill of the unknown. So he decided his books would capture that sense of wonder, and he would be as creative as possible in writing something different, unique, and unexpected. He doesn't like to write the stories everyone has heard over and over again. He wants you to think "Wow, I never thought that was possible!" when reading his books.
He has a BA in American Multicultural Studies and speaks Chinese and English as well as a smattering of Spanish and Burmese. This helps him flesh out alien cultures in his work so that they are unique and have believable motivations and backstories.
He likes writing fight scenes and has a fast-paced writing style, but he is not a fan of writing exposition or too many descriptions.
Sean's favorite series are Halo, Stargate, The Expanse, The Expeditionary Force Series, The Earthrise Series, Ender's Game, and The Koban Series.
His motto is: If it's boring to write, it's boring to read.
Here's a joke he made up. The answer is at the bottom.
What is Santa Claus' favorite type of magic?
Subscribe to his mailing list at https://www.baisbooks.com/contact
Follow him on Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/sean-bai
Follow his Soundcloud account (to hear what he listens to as he writes):
https://soundcloud.com/sean-ia
Answer: Sleigh of hand
He has a BA in American Multicultural Studies and speaks Chinese and English as well as a smattering of Spanish and Burmese. This helps him flesh out alien cultures in his work so that they are unique and have believable motivations and backstories.
He likes writing fight scenes and has a fast-paced writing style, but he is not a fan of writing exposition or too many descriptions.
Sean's favorite series are Halo, Stargate, The Expanse, The Expeditionary Force Series, The Earthrise Series, Ender's Game, and The Koban Series.
His motto is: If it's boring to write, it's boring to read.
Here's a joke he made up. The answer is at the bottom.
What is Santa Claus' favorite type of magic?
Subscribe to his mailing list at https://www.baisbooks.com/contact
Follow him on Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/sean-bai
Follow his Soundcloud account (to hear what he listens to as he writes):
https://soundcloud.com/sean-ia
Answer: Sleigh of hand
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 19, 2024
*Thanks to the author for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.*
The book started off in a very serious nature but I couldn't help laughing about the aliens.
Seriously, what's with the Mao and Ro Han? Cats and dogs??
I found it really clever and funny at the same time.
Who doesn't love the primitive enmity between these two?
Even though the whole setting seems to be funny, it's not like that at all. The whole inter-galactic war concept was drawn out really well. And what amazed me most were the fighting scenes. They were very, very thrilling!!
But what annoyed me most was the story of how everyone came together. It didn't make much sense and the author seemed to have understood that himself and tried to hide the fact in various logics. But that didn't make it any better. Once you get past that, it's an interesting book.
This book is not for everyone but it is specially recommended for the people who are more into light-hearted thrillers.
The book started off in a very serious nature but I couldn't help laughing about the aliens.
Seriously, what's with the Mao and Ro Han? Cats and dogs??
I found it really clever and funny at the same time.
Who doesn't love the primitive enmity between these two?
Even though the whole setting seems to be funny, it's not like that at all. The whole inter-galactic war concept was drawn out really well. And what amazed me most were the fighting scenes. They were very, very thrilling!!
But what annoyed me most was the story of how everyone came together. It didn't make much sense and the author seemed to have understood that himself and tried to hide the fact in various logics. But that didn't make it any better. Once you get past that, it's an interesting book.
This book is not for everyone but it is specially recommended for the people who are more into light-hearted thrillers.
January 10, 2021
I really enjoyed this story, lots of new sci-fi elements make it unique, and the snappy writing style keeps things moving along nicely. Best book I've read in a while!
April 12, 2021
I would give this zero stars if I could.
This book is about as disjointed as a drunken, LSD fueled crawl through Berkeley in the late 1990's. Chapter notations will be listed as (CH) with the number of the chapter. Here are some of the issues with the book.
The government has failed 10 years prior and society has crumbled (CH1), but the people still have orphanage schools complete with field trips, 911,police, power, intermittent cellphone service, planet colonization post fall (CH 3) and YouTube (CH6) with no explanation of how these things continued during what is in essence the equivalent of the first Mad Max movie from the 1980's. Within the first chapter I am wondering how they are paying for cell service, buying food and doing all the things that would be extremely difficult if society failed.
We have two alien races: The Ro Hon (a Dog/Jackal race) and the Mao (a cat race in case you couldn't guess due to the originality of the author), both are approximately human sized (CH 1). Both have been on Earth for about 5000 years. The Mao can somehow dig a grave with a hand shovel in a minute, excluding ducking back into the sewer to hide from humans (CH 1).
The Mao have been looking out for humanity since ancient Egypt and guiding them, but the government still failed and society crumbled. but only in the U.S. (CH 1-3). These same Mao don't have fingers as humans do, don't understand the saying "rule of thumb" (insinuation they do not have them and haven't been paying all that much attention to humans as they guide them in CH 3),but can somehow use a knife to slash effectively and remarkably have large fingers (CH 5) later on. They also seem to sharpen their claws with knives,because as a technologically advanced race they obviously have not heard of a file (CH 5).
The humans want to have the government help them (that same government that failed when society crumbled a decade ago in CH 1).
Two of the humans work at an orphanage, in a society where murder,rape,etc has become commonplace (according to the author in CH1), where these same humans would need to protect the children and yet they have no idea how to use a firearm(Ch 4) . How did these people survive in the first place? How did another human in the group retain a job as a personal trainer? Why would one of these humans mother tell them to call and keep calling after he says he may be in an area without service (CH 3), if it has been stated that cell service is intermittent at best (CH 1) previously?
Both sides have humans that work for them. The Ro Hon have the Dogs of Destruction,which sounds like a B-Movie biker gang, except they dress like the Men in Black and have limousines (CH 3) and the Mao have various people that seem fairly incompetent on a regular basis. A perfect example of this is their experienced "operators" that do not know to take the long way back to the hide out and watch out for being followed. Something criminals have been doing in cinema, books and actual history since at least the time of Prohibition,if not the Age of Sail. This may be excused due to the terrible training methods the Mao seem to use as a Mao "soldier" teaches these humans to punch other humans and Ro Hon in the face in a life or death struggle ( CH 4-5).
The ritual sacrifice of science with the Mao wondering how much time has passed among the stars, with five thousand years passing on earth, just hurts. Time dilation and quantum distortion apply to things that move faster than light. Please stop butchering Einstein, Oppenheimer, Hawking and Kaku.
The author further shows their misunderstanding of societal breakdown when describing the misspelled signs about illegal aliens (CH 6), not understanding that with societal breakdown it would be more like what happened in South Sudan than what we see currently.
In addition to all of this most of the characters are one dimensional at best and caricatures at worst:
Abigail the techno wonder that helped the colony ships after the government fell, that has been helping the Mao the entire time and was trained to be a sniper on military bases as a civilian dependent.
Felix the Cat...err Mao, the alien warrior who really hasn't studied the race of his allies, cannot teach effectively and hands firearms to people who have never used one right before invading the island.
Terry the human who really hasn't done much other than work at an orphanage and really doesn't do much except make preachy political commentary and whine.
And a host of others in a similar vein. If the author has found a bad character trope he didn't fall in love with, I didn't see it. This is in addition to terrible world building. Several independent authors do decent or better world building.
Partlow, Benjamin, Anderle, Allan and Stewart (to name a few) all have done good to great world building for military science fiction. This author is the antithesis of that.
In closing, I would say I have read better books on Wattpad. This is more the equivalent of a 9th grade creative writing assignment, where it concerns plot, world building, character development and consistency. Further the author is to military science fiction, what a decisive military victory was to the Emu War in Australia.
This book is about as disjointed as a drunken, LSD fueled crawl through Berkeley in the late 1990's. Chapter notations will be listed as (CH) with the number of the chapter. Here are some of the issues with the book.
The government has failed 10 years prior and society has crumbled (CH1), but the people still have orphanage schools complete with field trips, 911,police, power, intermittent cellphone service, planet colonization post fall (CH 3) and YouTube (CH6) with no explanation of how these things continued during what is in essence the equivalent of the first Mad Max movie from the 1980's. Within the first chapter I am wondering how they are paying for cell service, buying food and doing all the things that would be extremely difficult if society failed.
We have two alien races: The Ro Hon (a Dog/Jackal race) and the Mao (a cat race in case you couldn't guess due to the originality of the author), both are approximately human sized (CH 1). Both have been on Earth for about 5000 years. The Mao can somehow dig a grave with a hand shovel in a minute, excluding ducking back into the sewer to hide from humans (CH 1).
The Mao have been looking out for humanity since ancient Egypt and guiding them, but the government still failed and society crumbled. but only in the U.S. (CH 1-3). These same Mao don't have fingers as humans do, don't understand the saying "rule of thumb" (insinuation they do not have them and haven't been paying all that much attention to humans as they guide them in CH 3),but can somehow use a knife to slash effectively and remarkably have large fingers (CH 5) later on. They also seem to sharpen their claws with knives,because as a technologically advanced race they obviously have not heard of a file (CH 5).
The humans want to have the government help them (that same government that failed when society crumbled a decade ago in CH 1).
Two of the humans work at an orphanage, in a society where murder,rape,etc has become commonplace (according to the author in CH1), where these same humans would need to protect the children and yet they have no idea how to use a firearm(Ch 4) . How did these people survive in the first place? How did another human in the group retain a job as a personal trainer? Why would one of these humans mother tell them to call and keep calling after he says he may be in an area without service (CH 3), if it has been stated that cell service is intermittent at best (CH 1) previously?
Both sides have humans that work for them. The Ro Hon have the Dogs of Destruction,which sounds like a B-Movie biker gang, except they dress like the Men in Black and have limousines (CH 3) and the Mao have various people that seem fairly incompetent on a regular basis. A perfect example of this is their experienced "operators" that do not know to take the long way back to the hide out and watch out for being followed. Something criminals have been doing in cinema, books and actual history since at least the time of Prohibition,if not the Age of Sail. This may be excused due to the terrible training methods the Mao seem to use as a Mao "soldier" teaches these humans to punch other humans and Ro Hon in the face in a life or death struggle ( CH 4-5).
The ritual sacrifice of science with the Mao wondering how much time has passed among the stars, with five thousand years passing on earth, just hurts. Time dilation and quantum distortion apply to things that move faster than light. Please stop butchering Einstein, Oppenheimer, Hawking and Kaku.
The author further shows their misunderstanding of societal breakdown when describing the misspelled signs about illegal aliens (CH 6), not understanding that with societal breakdown it would be more like what happened in South Sudan than what we see currently.
In addition to all of this most of the characters are one dimensional at best and caricatures at worst:
Abigail the techno wonder that helped the colony ships after the government fell, that has been helping the Mao the entire time and was trained to be a sniper on military bases as a civilian dependent.
Felix the Cat...err Mao, the alien warrior who really hasn't studied the race of his allies, cannot teach effectively and hands firearms to people who have never used one right before invading the island.
Terry the human who really hasn't done much other than work at an orphanage and really doesn't do much except make preachy political commentary and whine.
And a host of others in a similar vein. If the author has found a bad character trope he didn't fall in love with, I didn't see it. This is in addition to terrible world building. Several independent authors do decent or better world building.
Partlow, Benjamin, Anderle, Allan and Stewart (to name a few) all have done good to great world building for military science fiction. This author is the antithesis of that.
In closing, I would say I have read better books on Wattpad. This is more the equivalent of a 9th grade creative writing assignment, where it concerns plot, world building, character development and consistency. Further the author is to military science fiction, what a decisive military victory was to the Emu War in Australia.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 16, 2021
APPALLING
Couldn't give a zero, so 1 star will suffice. I don't know how old the author is or nationality. This could have been a good story. However the appalling "conversations" we're child like in nature . Nobody talks like the way it was portrayed in this book. It was grammatically incorrect and made me cringe. If this is the way the other books will be written, then I am going to be very disappointed. If this book was proof read and edited correctly, it may have turned out to be a little more interesting.
It was so bad that I was skipping so many pages just to reach the conclusion of this particular book/story.
Odd really as the book art cover portrays an interesting and exciting read. However that was let down quite badly by the content. Read at your peril. I cannot recommend this book.
Couldn't give a zero, so 1 star will suffice. I don't know how old the author is or nationality. This could have been a good story. However the appalling "conversations" we're child like in nature . Nobody talks like the way it was portrayed in this book. It was grammatically incorrect and made me cringe. If this is the way the other books will be written, then I am going to be very disappointed. If this book was proof read and edited correctly, it may have turned out to be a little more interesting.
It was so bad that I was skipping so many pages just to reach the conclusion of this particular book/story.
Odd really as the book art cover portrays an interesting and exciting read. However that was let down quite badly by the content. Read at your peril. I cannot recommend this book.
July 31, 2021
OK, I understand this is the first book in a series but...
Cat aliens have been hidden on earth for thousands of years. Now a species of canine aliens (bit obvious, isn't it?), enemies of the cats are attacking humans. The cats nab a bunch of humans and try to get back to their homeworld, which is on the brink of war with the dogs.
My biggest problem is that book 1 of this series didn't seem to end in a logical spot. I don't expect a stand-alone, but this just seemed awkward.
Cat aliens have been hidden on earth for thousands of years. Now a species of canine aliens (bit obvious, isn't it?), enemies of the cats are attacking humans. The cats nab a bunch of humans and try to get back to their homeworld, which is on the brink of war with the dogs.
My biggest problem is that book 1 of this series didn't seem to end in a logical spot. I don't expect a stand-alone, but this just seemed awkward.
January 24, 2021
Interesting
Amazing adventures of humans and an alien feline race teamed up against the Ro Han, a dog like race in an epic war in outer space. Looking forward to reading more from this author!
Amazing adventures of humans and an alien feline race teamed up against the Ro Han, a dog like race in an epic war in outer space. Looking forward to reading more from this author!
February 20, 2021
Looks good for middle school reading. Interesting meet the aliens story of adventure. Slow in the beginning. There is a lot of description and explaining, presumably for background for the future. Action is a bit light but if this is going to be a long series it may work out fine.
March 7, 2021
Good, but some issues
Overall story good and world building adequate but too much social commentary touching on liberal vs. conservative, climate change and other hot topics of the socially conscious. For me, I just want a good story. No moralizing to audience.
Overall story good and world building adequate but too much social commentary touching on liberal vs. conservative, climate change and other hot topics of the socially conscious. For me, I just want a good story. No moralizing to audience.
January 23, 2021
The book started a bit slow but as it went on it got better and better I am glad that I have read this book I do hope he does a second book I will look forward to it
February 12, 2021
I got this book as a giveaway. It was an easy read that was definitely catered more to middle grade readers than older ones. I still liked it but was out of my age range and felt a little childish.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews