Nebula Vigilante

Vigilante Series #2

by T. Jackson King

Matt Dragoneaux hates the cloneslavery and indentured bondServant status that most people, human and alien, live under in the Anarchate galactic culture, a society with no law, no justice and little freedom for the galaxy’s many species. Pursued by Anarchate battleglobes for the crime of saving his love Eliana’s home planet, Matt declares war on the Anarchate. Saving a few worlds from oppression is not enough. Ending a two million year old alien tyranny is his new aim. With the help of BattleMind and Mata Hari, two AIs created by the ancient T’Chak aliens, Matt fights one battle after another, dodging antimatter beams as he makes Hit-and-Run forays. Finally he seeks help from the T’Chak of the Small Magellanic Cloud. Getting there will take all the talents of Matt, Eliana, Mata Hari, BattleMind and new partners in the effort to bring hope, justice and freedom to the galaxy. But the Anarchate aims to turn Matt’s ship into a black hole—if they can catch him!

Genres: Science Fiction

284 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2013

About the author

T. Jackson King (Tom) is an Amazon bestselling science fiction and urban fantasy author. He is a lifelong reader of SciFi/Fantasy stories and his favorite authors have included Darynda Jones, BR Kingsolver, K.F. Breene, Martha Carr, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Andre Norton, J. K. Rowling, Ann Christy, Lois McMaster Bujold and Ursula LeGuin. Outside of fantasy and science fiction he has enjoyed the novels of Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, and the urban fantasy crime mysteries of Darynda Jones.

Tom began writing SF novels at age 38, when he discovered he had read all the Human-Alien first contact or encounter novels in his local library. So he decided to write his own, thanks to an overactive, very visual imagination. Those early years produced FIRST CONTACT and RETREAD SHOP. When the New York City publishing houses ignored his later novels because they had no Hollywood tie-in, he went to several small presses, then began self-publishing as an Indy author in 2011. He loves that readers in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are some of his most loyal readers!

Before becoming a bestselling author, Tom worked in a radiocarbon lab at UC Riverside and earned an MA degree in Archaeology from UCLA. His interests in ancient history, ancient cultures and journalism got him several government agency jobs that led him to roam the raw landscape of the Western United States where he worked as a federal archaeologist and newspaper journalist.

Tom lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA and hangs with a group of smart and tolerant Westerners. Divorce taught him to smile a lot and to work at being a Nice Guy. Which earned him the love of his wife Sue. Still, he is pretty weird. Has been since fourth grade when he began reading SciFi. Since then, he and Authority have rarely been in agreement. Readers are welcome to visit his T. Jackson King page.

Reviews

[Per Gunnar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably one of the most high-tech sci-fi series that I have read in a while. Now that doesn’t mean that it this is a book suitable for the die-hard techno fans out there. The tech is not really very in-detail or well explained or anything like that. It is more on the level of loads and loads of high-tech toys like cyborg tech, spaceships that reshape themselves, sentient AI’s, battle suits packed with weapons, a wide range of überweapons including biochemical ones etc…

The book is fun reading. It is fairly quickly paced and there is plenty of battles going on. The battles themselves are somewhat different from the usual sci-fi fare in that Matt, being a cyborg, can accelerate his perception of reality to the level of an AI, well almost at least, and all action takes place with time counted in nanoseconds. Somewhat original and adds a nice touch to these books.

Matt’s constant struggle to keep the AI BattleMind of “his” ship from taking rash and impulsive actions, and keep its goals in line with Matt’s own goals, and the interactions this entails are also quite entertaining. We are talking about an AI with a huge ego, short temper and severe lack of patience here.

Towards the end things feel like they are going a bit too fast though. The story really gets a wee bit too quick and simple. New species are discovered and befriended at a rather unrealistic pace and the story in general feels rushed. It could have done with a bit more polish at this point. Having said that it does open some interesting possibilities if the author decides to follow-up on them.

On the whole an entertaining book that makes me want to read the next one as well.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, was very hard for me to put down, it feels written differently than Star Vigilante not as much imagery flood in this book. To me it seems more polished or refined, there is just enough description to convey what the author wanted to show but let the imagination fill in the rest to make the feel of the book allot smoother. It's a shorter book and reads fast. Character development was darn good for me and the story moved along at a nice pace. My only complain about this book is the ending, when you finish it you will understand what I mean. I understand why it was done this way but none the less I don't like when books end in this manner...don't get me wrong it doesn't kill or subtract from the book in any way, the ending but just makes you go "what!" and close the cover gently. All in all I would highly recommend this book if you enjoyed Star Vigilante.

[Aaron Anderson]

I won't rate this as I did not finish it.

I just can't take this author's attempts at characterization and emotion and stuff. The main character reads like a really bad fantasy stock character. I like how he's trying to characterize AI's and misc stuff, but I just can't take anymore of the author's efforts.