Origin Series Box Set (1-4) (Star Force Universe)

Kind of like "Stargate" on steroids.... without the wormholes but with an inimical technologically advanced race to worry about. If you prefer that your sci-fi have a touch of plausibility, this one's for you. I'm off to binge read the next few.

I like details in fiction. To me, a great story idea that reads like an outline (i.e. John Grisham) is terribly disappointing. Like a beautiful steak without salt. This book is the opposite. Page after page of training details that do nothing to develop the characters or advance the plot. When the book was finished, there was only a vaguely defined antagonist (dinosaurs that haven't been seen for more than a hundred thousand years). The protagonist, Paul, is almost as undefined. The supporting cast are little more than names.

The story is nothing more than: Old alien artifact found by rich guy who wants to colonize space, uses the alien tech to start building stuff and recruits a group of people into his new Space Force school and they train really, really hard. Seriously, that is it.The book is all about the training protocols with really nothing else going for it.

I haven't bought this boxset as I own all the individual copies, however I wanted to leave a review in order to help things along anyway. Frankly speaking, this series is god damn amazing. The attention to detail and effort put into it is astronomical, especially considering Aer-ki Jyr has been releasing an episode every 2 weeks. The series itself is definitely not your typical Sci-Fi, as it jumps through time quite quickly, giving us glimpses of awesome battles, epic world building and all around badassery by the main cast of characters. (Who, despite spanning over a millennium, are still the same. Limited immortality has it's perks. Especially since we get to keep watching our favorite characters grow with the galaxy around them.)

Jyr introduces some very interesting things to the series that wouldn't typically be seen in others. And there are some interesting ideologies that work extremely well with the overall scene.

Personally, I feel that this series is on par, if not better than some of the big names and popular Sci-Fi like Star Wars, Stargate, Star Trek ect.. And in fact it is quite well know among Jyr's current fanbase that the author and series itself is heavily influenced by some of these great works.

There are few things I can say that are negative about this series overall to be honest, and while there are a few select "episodes" that I find a bit lacking compared to others, I do not in any way believe this is a series that can be judged by the individual additions to it. Another thing worth noting is the lack of an editor. For the most part, likely due to the unusual fortnightly release schedule. Hopefully once episode 100 hits the 'digital' shelves, Jyr might be able to look into finding one to go comb through the series and tidy things up. That being said, it is not something worth worrying about in my opinion, greatly in part due to the increasing leap of quality the further the series gets, but also because the series has always been at a readable standard. And complaining about a few grammar or spelling mistakes when each episode is pushed out within a 2 week timespan without fail, is like complaining about an extra cookie in your cookie jar. It would be silly.

I’ve complete all 100/25 of the origin series now. The author has created an unbelievably deep story line with rich explanations and internal consistency across all books. The first book or two can be a little slower but it is well worth the initial investment as these books are critical to the overall story foundation. I highly recommend this series for those that like in depth and well thought out military sci-fi with a strong society building aspect to it.

This is the beginning of one of the greatest Franchise saga's I have ever read, a couple of times, enthralling storytelling well worth the read. Lots of room to grow equal to Asimov and the foundation series. Great job, character development and imagination I would highly recommend the entire storyline

An interesting story what blends military training, advanced tech and the human condition. I’d like to see how the following books deliver the story. What kind of conflicts arise and more of the personal angle. A pretty good read

After reading about the first 60 volumes or so, I notice distinct patterns of word usage, syntax idiosyncrasies, homonym errors, spelling errors, and the like. I think at least four different authors are writing this, perhaps more. Some volumes are entirely nonlinear, in that they tell a part of the story unconnected to the rest. These could have been assigned separately and written concurrently. Many of these issues can't be flagged by a spell checker, which won't notice if you write snipped instead of sniped, later instead of latter, etc. A good yarn all in all, but an editor would have been a big help, without slowing the output unduly.

Pick the first box set for a new series to read and got hook and started reading the first phase of the series back to back and couldn't put it down. Now I wait for each new addition to series like it's Christmas!

Great read, only found this series about a year ago(before the first 100 were finished), and have been waiting eagerly for every new release since. It provides enough technicality for me without getting bogged down in it and provides some interesting characters that you can attach yourself too. One of the few scifi stories that keeps my attention and can't wait to see where the story line is going(Specially after the latest release of Return to Earth). Keep it up Aer-ki Jyr

Not a terrible read, especially if you don't mind slogging through chapter after chapter of things not related to space. I gave up after reading through this box set and having my only memory of the books being a long involved description of how you use jet skis to snag rings in some obstacle race on earth. Yup - 4 books and you are still following the space cadets on earth. They had a quick trip to space to snag rings in some obstacle course there.
All that being said, it wasn't written too badly and this series might appeal to a young audience willing to keep paying for each of the many installments.

TLDR: It's an OK read, though pretty slow going (halfway through Book 6 and they are still in training), and if you can wade through the excessive exposition and ignore the glaring pop-culture anachronisms, it's worth a try.

This is what I would describe as an OK read. The overall plot of the series seems like it will be interesting but the actual implementation leaves a bit to be desired. There are two big issues with the story that interfered with my enjoyment and majorly blocked the flow. The first issue is the author obviously has some strong opinions on sociology, philosophy and ethics and he's using this story to try and express them This is fine in-and of-itself, but unfortunately the story repeatedly gets bogged down in long, multi page expositions, speechifying or character internal monologues that are used to express these thoughts to the reader. After wading through one particular "conversation" that went on for multiple chapters about the value of exercise to promote long life, I ended up skipping forward several pages at a time to try and get back to the story. The ideas expressed are moderately interesting but a three chapter conversation about exercise completely bogs down the flow of the story. The second problem I have is the authors use of excessive anachronistic pop-culture references. The plot is set around 2045, and focuses on a group of people aged 18-20 years old. meaning they would all have been born more than 10 years in our future. Yet they are all continuously spouting pop culture references, many of which are already 10 years or more out of date in 2016! Multiple references to Star Wars, Star Trek and worst of all Halo are completely jarring. For a 17 year old character in the year 2043 to tell us the last book he read was Halo Fall of Reach? That book was published in 2001! References to Tron and Power Rangers are equally jarring. The worst I've come across was when two characters discuss the plot of the movie Hancock, starring Will Smith from 2008. What 19 year old will be watching that movie 37 years from now? Let alone a whole group of them. The author is gleefully and repeatedly referencing his own interest's and they are completely out of place for a story set 30 years in the future.
I will continue to read the story, for a while at least, but these kinds of jarring discrepancies seriously impact on the immersion.
The author has a few minor grammatical and spelling issues as well (repeatedly using "faint" instead of "feint") but as English is not his first language I can forgive these.
As a Kindle Unlimited product (that therefore cost's me nothing) it does alright. For $4 per edition, it would probably be a Pass.

Considering there are over 100 books in the series, and I'm now on number 14, I'm noticing a repetitive and irritating lack of editing. Common spelling and grammatical errors that could be easily corrected, for example 'faint' being used when 'feint' is meant; and with that over a hundred in the series the same cover art becomes tedious and insulting. The story line is advancing, so should the cover art to reflect it.

Sounded like and interesting premise- alien technology under Antarctica, idealist wanting to improve conditions on Earth and create a way to get into space since Earth nations have given up. Turns out mostly a play-by-play of video games, some video, some live action. The development of Team 021-029 is somewhat interesting, but bogged down by the play-by-play. Would like to see the story developed as a novel with emphasis on plot and character development and no play-by-play.

I am assuming it is because it’s a sit-up for the follow up books, but I found this dry, with minimal plot.
There are extensive detailed description of team competitions, and only minimal bits advancing the plot. I really don’t need a detailed breakdown of every video game like competition. It gets repetitive and boring.

The initial book (four stories) is fast paced and we'll thought out, with realistic science facts and procedures. Orbital mechanics is not an easy subject to understand, but the author either gets the concept or has expert advice, because he gets it right!

IMHO I believe this is a great read. I am not one to leave reviews. I liked the great pace of this space opera. The Characters are well fleshed out and are easy to believe in. It’s Jurassic Park meets Star Wars.

This box set is just the beginning to a very large well thought out universe. There are 25 box sets of the Origin Series, and 11 plus follow on books so far for this Universe. This 1st box set is very important and you need the detailed understanding so that things make sense in the future box sets. So I encourage you to keep reading, because it does get really good, and you don’t want to miss out.

It got old for me. It had a great story line and good characters and started with a good plot. It seemed repetitious and it lost its zing for me so I won’t be continuing the rest. I just couldn’t keep any interest. I found myself skipping pages which I never do.

I understand this is the start to a long series of books. I can't wait to read some more but this is a little slow to start a lot of details on train in so forth. But I do think I will continue with the series

I thought book 1-4 would be great deal but wait it goes to like 44?
10 books of four or so each? With only 3 to 4 hundred pages per set of 4? For 5.99 Money grab. The author seems to write well but goes on and on and on

I really enjoyed, not only the first boss in this series, but the whole thing. There is quite a bit of detail and thought put into the series. If you enjoy long running, epic sci-fi stories I would recommend this.

HUGE fan. I find these books very entertaining with great attention placed on the technology and training regimes. Granted the first novella takes a bit to set the scene but ones you dekve deeper I promise you will not be abke to stop. I have read all episodes currently published and watch the calander each month waiting for the next installment.

It's like Robert A. Heinlein's stole a draft from Asimov, the publisher is Frank Herbert and the editor H.G. Wells'.
One of the best series i have read, gives the feeling of the old known Sci-fi writers.
the only problem is that you'll get addicted....
Highly recommended

After reading this book, I'm hooked. Do I have the time to read the whole series? Nope. Am I still going to read it all? Absolutely. The story, the characters, the places, the world building. Amazing. I wish more people were willing to write series as long and progressive as this rather than just a book or two and move on

Enders Game meets Starship Troopers (the book)......HOWEVER, there is too much game and too little trooper. After a semi-interesting first couple of chapters the author gets down to sending some of the characters to 'boot camp' where the training process gets described in agonizing detail. EVERY. LITTLE. DETAIL. It's as if someone took up house keeping in your head and forced you to watch him play and describe first person shooter video games on the back of your eyelids with the point spread between players being displayed on the inside of your skull.

I found myself flipping through pages in the hope of finding a glimpse of advancement along the plot line. Alas, such was not to be the case.

Needless to say, the result of this is a story that progresses with all the speed of an advancing glacier. What little character development can be found is of poor quality with little meaningful dialog thrown in. I fully understand the need to set up any world building you need to do for a series of books and it appears the author fully understands that and is proceeding in true geologic fashion.....an eon at a time.

Best to classify this as a pre-teen to young adult book. A faster pace would have had the possibility of engaging a wider range of audience but I fear it is too late as there appears to be a plethora of the books already out. There is not much here unless you are an avid gamer and don't mind waiting for the next Ice Age to get anywhere in the story line..

Two stars instead of one because the language and spelling are a little better than most of what I have normally found on KU. I took a quick peek at the next book in the series since it was free, and found that in the finest tradition of the Star Force it picks up where the last one left off and proceeds just as fast.

The author needs to get a clue......uh, warp drive of some kind.

I was so looking forward to a new sci-fi series. What a disappointment. Very derivative calling to mind Starship Troopers, Ender's Game, and Star Fleet Academy. Characters are cardboard. Even after 4 books I only knew the names - no personality.

I have only read the compilation of the first 4 books and they did not leave me with a desire to finish the others. This series is a slow, directionless rehashing of Ender's Game with less interesting characters and at best delusional social critique. None of his cadets feel like real people struggling with the mental pressure and physical challenge of the most demanding training course ever created; they're all just idealized figments. No one burns out, no one hits their unsurpassable physical limits and there are no personality struggles between what would have to be one hundred aggressive, dominant perfectionists. Some of this would be forgivable in another setting but in what is portrayed as a near-reality sci-fi adventure, well, utopia makes for poor storytelling. Would not buy again.

It has ups and downs but once you get your head around the bad guys this is one of the most interesting SciFi universes out there. Only downside is the occasional typo which can be a tiny bit off-putting.

I read this based on the mostly high reviews. This is an ignorant science fantasy, not science fiction. Science fiction is fiction that does not break any known physical laws - it can make up new "discoveries" such as warp drive, but - by definition - it cannot violate what has been shown to be true.

The author has characters make specific statements about humans that are simply false. For example (Locations 3280 to 3322), some of the most intelligent characters in the series discuss why woman are the physical equals of men (in terms of muscles and physical competition, not political equality). This discussion explains why the female members of the Star Force can not only keep up with the male members, but why the physical leader of all of them is a woman.

While this sounds great, it is utter nonsense. Men and women are physically different, it cannot simply be explained away (as the author does) as cultural upbringing. For example, women have much better hearing than men and see better in terms of color perception and textile differentiation (see Why Gender Matters by Dr. Leonard Sax if you are interested in the science behind these facts).

Likewise, men are larger, stronger, and faster than women. Men have 40% more mass than women, but this is not all. Since men have much less body fat than women (no boobs), they have 60% more total lean muscle mass than women (and 80% more arm muscle). This means that the average man is 22% faster than the average women (measured by sprinting speed), can leap 45% higher, and is much stronger. So much stronger that the average man is stronger than 99.9% of ALL women in the world (3 standard deviations stronger) - see Puts DA. (2010) Beauty and the Beast: Mechanisms of sexual selection in humans. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31, 157–175.

This is why we don't allow men to compete in female sports - it would be grossly unfair. Occasionally you have a woman who is much stronger than the average woman and we allow her to compete with men because the absolute strongest woman in the world then is competitive with men, but this is a statistical outlier, not the norm.

At any rate, I quit reading at this point (75%) done out of disgust with the author presenting politically correct nonsense as fact and building a story upon it. I am not against strong female leads - Honor Harrington is a great character - but any series that not only ignores basic science, but tries to refute it - is not for me. Frankly, the differences between men and women are a great deal of what makes life so interesting, I don't see why some authors try to make us all the same.

This is suppose to be empire building or world building , not how to train a recruit in 500 pages. I finished this book, but it was a struggle, mostly because nothing of significance happens in it. There is no character development, you know nothing about the aliens, there is no progress .... Its infuriating that I can't get my days back.

I found myself continually skipping chapters at a time, trying to find the next plot point, only to find a continually disappointingly and excruciatingly boring series of “training” descriptions. All three of these blooks should have been condensed into may 2 or 3 chapters. I dont hold out much hope for the rest of the series

Are you looking for a great sci-if series? Look elsewhere. The origin series boxed set features mindless running, training and self-paced improvement of a protagonist whose name I can’t even remember after finishing. No tension, no bad guy, no pressure, rivalry or danger, and no climax in all of four books.

What started out as an interesting premise (finding a buried pyramid under Antarctica) ended up being a book about new inductee training programs for a new space fleet. While somewhat interesting it turns into a marathon training and testing session. Character development is limited and the story arc suffers. Not sure I will continue this series.

As covered by other reviewers there is an entire section pushing the debunked feminist lie about women being physically, and intellectually, superior to males. It killed the story more than the lack of good characters. For those curious how women perform compared to men in the Military the results are easy to find and men outperformed magnitudes.better. The writer should save the fiction for the story and leave out his agendas.

GRADES
Story -- A
Creativity -- B+
Word Use -- C
Sentence Structure -- D
Spelling -- F

If you are a recent product of the public school system, and of your reading is texts an twitter, you will probably not notice the weaknesses.

If you received a good education and/or are well read, then you might find reading this very painful.

This novel starts out great, and then descends into training. Training. Training. Details about various training exercises. YIKES. If you are into paintball and other forms of physical training, this is for you. If you ware waiting for SOMETHING INTERESTING TO HAPPEN, try a different book. And such a promising beginning. I wonder how many more books of training there are before anything happens? I will never know...

I read half the book and had to put it away. Although the grammar and word usage were excellent, unfortunately, the author used entire chapters to explain a one paragraph concept. A similarity in style to US Federal regulations.

This purchase convinced me to never buy another book from this author. There are some good ideas presented, but the character development is glacially slow and the plot development is worse. I agree with the review "Not Star Force But Gym Force" but gave 2 stars for the sheer volume of stuff. If you liked Ender's Game you will be bored silly by this.

The prolog was good and set the stage for a good story. Unfortunately, none of the potential was realized. The rest was unbelievably boring. I stuck it out to the end, and it never improved. Felt like bait and switch.

Biggest issues (spoilers)
1. No story, just endless training in nauseating detail
2. Dinosaurs on the earth 100,000 years ago with human slaves. No explanation of how the dinosaurs survived, with no fossils, from 65M years ago until then.
3. Dinosaur bones in the pyramid. They weren’t fossils. There was enough bacteria to reduce the carcasses to bones. How was there anything left after 100K years?
4. I thought I was getting 4 books. But total was only 310 pages. Felt ripped off.

Incredibly boring to the point of bring unreadable. The first four books (this set) are dedicated to training, which involves paragraphs of descriptive training sessions and chapters dedicated to comparing points towards leaderboards with ZERO actual character development. A quick check on the start of the next series (books 5-8) reveals the named gymnasts, (I can't call them characters because they have no souls, just training scores), are still in training.

The accompanying 5 star reviews for this series all talk about how good the series WILL be...but at the current pace and flow of the series the first manned flight to mars will take up books 9-45. I find myself wondering if the 5 star reviews are close friends and family, or bots because this book is simply unreadable.

I must say I have to agree with all (basically) of the one-star reviews for this book, and I've read them all. I guess I'm at something of an advantage, as I can read the series for free due to my Prime membership. That being said, I don't have much hope for seeing any improvement in the story, and I'd like to echo and augment much of the reviews that have come before.

The Good
1. The series has a good "hook," with the discovery of an artifact buried under antarctic ice.
2. I'll have to give this some thought. (I finished writing this commentary, and coming back to this, I still can't think of anything.)

The Bad
1. There is way too much description about the training the Star Force trainees receive. It's as if the author is describing training "scenarios" in a Tomb Raider game. More like walkthroughs of the exact moves needed to complete each level. Unless you are actually able to play the game described, this is incredibly boring and as near to a perfect waste of time that I can imagine.
2. The characters are barely one-dimensional. I must, in all seriousness, liken them to pale imitations of the type of characters E. E. "Doc" Smith created for his Lensmen series. Those characters were almost two-dimensional. These are cartoons.
a. They have absolutely no emotions other than wanting to be better (earn more points during the training exercises) than the other training groups and individuals against whom they are competing.
b. None of them (apparently) give a single thought to the life they have irrevocably left behind. Family, relationships, good or bad memories; all of that is absent from their world, without a single misgiving or a second thought.
c. Physical (adult) relationships? Not a hint. Some people may actually think this is a good thing, but it makes the characters seem even less human than they already are.
3. The "story" (and I use that term very loosely in this context), doesn't go anywhere in more than 300 pages. I have started reading the second "book," but it appears to be more of the same: dull minutiae regarding the training that the characters are undergoing.
4. Grammar and spelling could use improvement. The author should learn the differences between "discreet" and "discrete," "faint" and "feint," and many others. This is my own personal pet peeve, as I usually ignore such slight blemishes. If a story is well-crafted with imagination, I let this type of comment go. As a writer myself (technical writer) I abhor such ignorance, but I am quite tolerant of it in others, as long as the entertainment value is there. I don't see much of that here, so far.

A Probably Controversial Comment
All of the above being said, it seems to me that the author is a very young person, without many of the experiences that would make his characters "real." Rattling on about the training details, with no character development, no real thoughts or feelings (personal or emotional or interpersonal) being expressed by the characters, sounds more like an immature talent trying to make the world as he sees it, real. I feel that the author is not quite "human" yet, but I hope he grows up and gives us better than this pap in the future.

I struggled through this box set (1-4) and expected at some point it would get better - it didn't. Then I started the next box set in the series and it was more of the same: boring, repetitive and numbing. Don't get caught in this trap.

This was complete and utter garbage. Even with the book being Sci-fi, the reader is forced to completely suspend his/her belief in the realities of the machinations of the world in order to even suffer through the obnoxiously self-righteous theories the author thinly veiled within his narrative. The delusional premise coupled with the immaturity found throughout the book that juxtaposed so completely with the author's attempt at a serious endeavor made reading this a frustrating struggle.

I like the premises of the book. That's what is in the sample. But what follows is a long list of "trainings", or disguised video game sessions, till the last few pages of the book. This is one case where the book sample misrepresents the book. Now, if you are a video game addict, you might like it, though you would not know that from reading the sample.

Never actually got to the Scifi of Scifi. Talked about it occasionally but the pot just kept going over and over with the same thing. Train me I am the best of all. I saw the force but never the stars.