Iron & Blood cover art

Iron & Blood

The Expansion Wars Trilogy, Book 2

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Iron & Blood

By: Joshua Dalzelle
Narrated by: Mark Boyett
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About this listen

The Black Fleet Saga continues....

A human planet has been invaded. The enigmatic Darshik have landed troops on a frontier world and have begun subduing major cities even as their blockade repels all attempts by the fledgling United Terran Federation to mount a counteroffensive.

The Federation's military command is desperate, and with their fleet still in tatters, they make a last-ditch effort to free the planet: They pull Captain Jackson Wolfe out of retirement and put him in command of a ship they hope can get past the defending armada and provide support to the beleaguered Marines and civilians fighting on the surface of the contested world.

There is no reasoning with this enemy. If the Terran Federation wants their planet back, they will have to pay the price.

Iron & Blood is the second book of the Expansion Wars Trilogy and the fifth book of the Black Fleet Saga.

©2017 Joshua Dalzelle (P)2017 Podium Publishing Fantasy Fiction Hard Science Fiction Military Science Fiction Space Opera Thought-Provoking Solar System

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Another thoroughly enjoyable book - I have binged listened the expansion wars series and can find no fault really, this part is slightly different as it introduces a ground warfare element - can’t recommend this series enough!

Another excellent book from Dalzelle

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Another hit from Joshua Dalzelle; well worth the credit. The added bonus was the narration by Mark Boyett.

Brilliant

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An excellent continuation of the Expansion Wars trilogy, superbly performed as usual by Mark Boyett. Very addictive to listen to, kept me wanting more.
A great Sci-Fi story, very well
plotted and with well fleshed out characters.
Thoroughly recommended.

Another excellent instalment to the Warship series

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Thrilling from start to finish, loved every second of it. It starts off with more details then seemed necessary, only to become relevant later on. I love this kind of world building, which makes characters feel like actual people instead of just words.

Excellent!

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Enjoy this series so much. The characters are developed well over the six books; the tech slowly develops and pleasingly there’s some ground war and a very different mission for the lead characters. It’s great seeing Wright develop, good that she’s imperfect too.
This series stands up to multiple listens.
The narration is engaging and accents are just diverse enough to describe characters without being caricatures. Outstanding.

Very full and diverse elements to the story

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good series, keeps wanting to listen. really looking forward to the next book. Shame it's going to end at some point.

love it

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I’m loving the books from this universe. Characters are great, storyline is awesome and the narration is spot on. I have one book left and I’m going to be gutted when it’s all over.

Another stunning chapter

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it's very sad to see what happened to me with the omega force series where no audio book is numbered for continuity and order of stories, the same thing here is listening to the expansion wars all three books just to realize that for the first time I should listen to black flet to better understand the story and to be continuity. you've lost a client who could have bought the black flet if I had not listened to the expansion wars first to know more than 50% of what's happening in black flet, it's a pity that such a good author is not in the mood to make a continuity in the titles and not miss a client.

Sad

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this was a good listen , I was pleased to hear all the prevous carictors I have come to love.

usual good stanards

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I looked forward to this second instalment of James Dalzelle's Expansion Wars trilogy. I very much enjoyed Dalzelle's Black Fleet Trilogy although I did find the final part of that series rather unsatisfying. Iron & Blood is a well written story and pulls the reader into the narrative as all good books do. Mark Boyett provides excellent narration as ever and in overall terms I did enjoy this story. however, as interesting as it was, the impression I got was that not an awful lot actually happened. The story moves on but it doesn't feel as well paced as other books by Dalzelle. Perhaps it's just me but the book spent most of itself describing what I felt might have been dealt with faster so that we could have more events occurring. I had meant to write this review, as I do with most, right after reading it so that it's fresh in my mind and perhaps this has marred my memory of the story. Again, I'd like to stress that it's a good story and written competently but I got the impression that events were being stretched out for a third book. There is a lot of scope in Dalzelle's stories but he seems to limit himself to trilogies with each book being relatively short which is a shame.

One thing I spotted in the first chapter of the book was an odd remark made by a character as he berated his enemy. When I heard it, I thought that it was clearly a simple typo by the author and wondered how on Earth this could get past the publishers and narrator but we hear a character say "Fickers" rather than the obvious expletive version of this altered by just a single letter and one that resides right next to the appropriate one on a keyboard. Unless I've missed something, I have no idea what a "Ficker" is and I can only assume it's a glaring typo.

Still, I look forward to the final part of this trilogy and can still recommend the book as a decent read.

Fickers?

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