Backyard Starship: Backyard Starship, Book 1

I have read nearly everything J.N Chaney and Terry Maggert have written but “Backyard Spaceship” is, in my opinion, their best collaboration yet.Van Tudor is a white hat hacker who, as a boy, was regaled with tales of aliens, space wars, beautiful alien women in distress, cruel criminals, and murderous interstellar crime syndicates, by his grandfather who, as far as Van knew was a black ops agent working for the Government. What if those stories were true, and Gramps was an agent, not for a super-secret agency of the Government, but a member of an intergalactic police force? And what if his grandfather left him a starship, two snarky, self-aware, hyper intelligent AI’s, so he could follow in his grandfather’s footsteps?That is the world created by Chaney and Maggert in “Backyard Spaceship.” The characters include the aforementioned snarky AI’s, a gorgeous heiress who can kick ass with Kung Fu, shoot off the antenna off of a spaceship from 500,000 kilometers, and pilot a spaceship like Han Solo, humans (remember all those alien abductions?) and of course, plenty of bad aliens and good aliens.This book was fun to read and the characters and story reminded me of the many Robert Heinlein books I devoured as a kid. Humor and action galore abound in “Backyard Spaceship;” I highly recommend this book and can’t wait until the next volume, “Red Bounty,” comes out on November 28th.

This story is just hard to review. Its an interesting idea, and the writing wasn't bad, but at the same time I never felt compelled to read the next page or chapter. This one took me far longer to read than most. I found it far too easy to put down to do anything other than read, and for me that's not normal.It's not a bad tale, just lacking in that special something that makes one want to find out what happens next. The main character is interesting, but lacks the heart that turns a character into an audience proxy. And the world he's in is just.... rather unpleasant to think about.It's a high three star. Good, but I can't see putting it into my "I'd recommend this to lots of people" bracket which leaves it at 3 stars. It's just missing something.

It’s competently written. Nothing that really makes me say, ‘this is *bad*’. Good grammar, well paced, solid world building, clear characters…even the handwavium is kept to acceptable levels for a light novel.It just didn’t thrill me.The MC has little agency, pretty much goes where he is told and does what he is told. He also thoroughly lacks skepticism, taking everything at face value with almost no questions. Astonishingly naive, he accepts a passenger without checking credentials or confirming identity. While trusting his various AIs to keep him on track is reasonable given his situation, taking strangers’ statements as true without question is just…stupid.I haven’t finished, so it’s quite possible the MC gets taught this important lesson later. But for an adult —with his background and relative— to be so blatantly gullible and not even express a single misgiving…I’m done.DNF

In the tradition of Heinlein, the tech is just background to the story about people.The start is kind of a repeated theme..The story starts slow, but introduces many many different threads, and only one is resolved.Makes this universe incredibly diverse.Reminds me of "Have space suit, will travel "And "Have Gun, will travel "Crossed with a computer game rules of a Quest and market based upgrades to your Hero.Really kind of hokey, but in an excellent way.Good fun, no gore and gratuitous stuff.

The good: The storyline is fine. The writing style is good. Plot development is fine.The bad: flat characters, juvenile plot, NO action development, boring tech, overall feels like a young adult novel. Will not read the next book on the series.

I read Backyard Starship prepublication, and I found the premise a fun throwback to SciFi I read as a kid in the 70's. The action is interesting, the characters are well developed, and as is a Hallmark of Chaney's work, the AI's provide a bit of levity (snark sometimes). The idea reminds me a bit of a combo of Judge Dredd, Green Lantern and and other earlier ensemble works with lots of different alien cultures. Worth the read!

Occasionally unbelievable but 100 percent enjoyable. Enough information so as to not be left hanging with interesting characters and an intriguing storyline. Loved the epilogue and ending. Wishing I didn’t have to wait for book two.

This author has taken a lot of modern near-Sol astrometric data to construct an adventure yarn with what, at first, seems to be a new and delightful twist. Unfortunately, the author didn't really use all the easily available data, so lots of plot elements don't work very well. His scenes with spacecraft maneuvers mostly make no sense - almost as if the author was using Star Wars physics, but with reaction-based engines. Still, a lot of interesting scenery, a (sort-of) plausible plot background. Reads a bit like a YA novel, but not really. This is not really up to modern SF space opera, but has its points. It is readable, and the (sort-of) cliff-hanger ending may make me see if the science part of the SF gets any better. Modern Space opera yarns really have a much higher bar with today's knowledge and readers who real know 'rocket science' better than the good old days.

I mistook this for a series of a similar name, it turned out to be a happy mistake. While the theme may not be new this story has some significant props of its own.There is a lot of humour, much of it dry, all of it written with an excellent turn of phrase. The characters seem to mesh better for all the badinage. Great fun and a decent sized story to get one’s teeth into.

I really enjoyed this book. It was a good solid read with plenty of excitement and action. The Peacemakers are so real and the main characters are just so payback, yet I never felt they were out of context. Don't miss this one. I am just going to preorder the next book.

This is an excellent read with plenty of action and humour! The main character has a lighthearted attitude to his tasks as a galactic cop but with a steely determination.

Another good read which I thoroughly enjoyed and look forward to reading the follow up book. It's a new series I have already booked the download of the next book so get the book and give it a read of you like Chaneys books you will enjoy this. First book read of Maggert so if this anything to go by then will enjoy and look forward to more books to read.

It's very immature. The author writes good banter and has good descriptions. The pictures painted are all very good.The issue I find with this book is that it's just a whole bunch of stuff happening. There's not really a theme or central story. There's a lot of plot armour, Mcguffins and convenient timing to move things along. It's not bad, in fact I'd say it's ideal for anyone with a very short attention span.I liked it, I liked the world and the characters so I've bought the sequel in the hope that this effort was a table setter that allows the rest of the books to focus more.