Cyber Viking Book 1 by Marcus Sloss Review

Hey, you crazy cats and kittens. Step into the spear line with me as we talk about the most recent #HaremLit book that I’ve ever read! This book was a lot different than anything I’ve read. I’ve said that before, but this time, it was a cyberpunk story. It was a bit darker than my usual preference, with the main character existing in a world devastated by an alien invasion. But, even with that bit of a depressing setting, it was a lot of fun to experience this world. It had everything: hot girls, a fun harem dynamic, and all of the alien combat that you could ask for. So, join me on this crazy adventure and dive into the deep end of crazy with me, Lance Spears!

Book Title: CYBER VIKING Book 1

Author: Marcus Sloss

Narrator: Jack Douglas and Alexa Roosevelt

Audio Publisher: Royal Guard Publishing

eBook Price: $4.99 USD

Audiobook Price: $9.80 USD or one Audible Credit

Whisper Sync Pricing: $12.48 USD

Pages: 581

Audiobook Length: 14 Hours 48 Minutes

Keywords: Cyberpunk, USA, America, Colorado, Aspen, Denver, Apocalypse Post Apocalypse, Science Fiction, Harem, Aliens, Alien Invasion, First Contact, Marcus Sloss, Royal Guard Publishing, Violence, Action, Untraditional Relationship, Untraditional Relationship, Combat, Fighting, Death, PTSD, War, Killing, Murder, Breeding, Impregnation

Summary

Eric Yang is 32, a combat veteran of the Saudi war, and a student at Denver University (DU). His goal was to reintegrate back into society. His service freed him from the mistakes of his past. His dedication pushed him to achieve more from life even with his disabilities. While not all scars from war are visible, Eric was given a cybernetic arm that even scientists in 2032 considered futuristic.

An isolated semester at DU is disrupted by his doctor’s dire warning. The asteroid barreling toward Earth is an alien spacecraft with hostile intent. Eric scrambles to plan, consolidate, and form his team while the rest of an oblivious society is prevented from vital information.

The summary by this author was spot on! It gave us a hint of what to expect, showed the authorial tone, and generally made me want to read this book. The kick-ass cover, paired with this blurb, sold it for me. I love the sense of mystery that is implied and even cooler, the author delivered as promised.

Characters

The characters in this story were compelling and a lot of fun. Sure, some of these characters were a tad psycho, but in all of the best ways! And when it was in the worst ways, like with Captain Moostache, well… war is hell, and survival goes to the one most willing to fight until the bitter end. So, yeah, the PTSD-ridden main character was a bit of a sociopath, but in a fight, I want him on my side. Like with most harem stories, the final product is better because of the group dynamic of the harem and the supporting cast. The story is told through the eyes of our main character, Eric Yang, but you never felt like you didn’t know who the supporting players were either. That takes skill, given the number of important players in this book. I’ll break down the individual characters, but overall, I loved all of the ensemble cast.

Captain Eric Yang, USA: He’s the main point of view character of this book. He’s a former soldier who fought his way home from the Saudia-Arabian War after his country, America, abandoned his unit to die when they pulled out of the conflict. Eric is a natural leader who is motivated to save those under his command, and I liked that about him. He’s tall, physically fit, and looks ruggedly handsome. Ladies love him and men want to be him, just what you want in a #HaremLit main character! When he was in Saudi Arabia, he earned the moniker of ‘Captain Moostache, the Pirate King’ because of the videos he made documenting his survival. His videos forced the government to acknowledge the soldiers they abandoned. After the alien invasion, he forms a new society based on a merger of old and new, the Viking and modern military cultures blending in a way that fits their new reality.

Willow Hanks: She is the first member of Eric’s harem, a pink-haired college girl who finds her man to be sexy. She’s the daughter of a soldier who died in some previous American conflict and left her wanting to make a difference. She was desperately in love with Eric and motivated to make him happy. But more than that, she wants to do more than hide behind others. Instead, she wants to become a fighter, grabbing her future by the balls and making it her bitch. When she realized that Eric had a relationship with Perci before her, she encouraged their throuple to keep everyone happy. In the end, she, too, falls for her harem sister and starts something beautiful.

Persephony ‘Perci’ Growlen: She’s a veteran of the Saudi Arabian conflict, where she served as a sergeant under the fake name of Persephony Morrison. She worked in S1, where she managed paperwork. She’s the daughter of Linda Growlen, the president and owner of G-Corp. They’re an analog of all of the big tech companies rolled into one oppressive conglomeration. She’s desperately in love with Eric and has moved literal mountains to make him happy, even if he was happy without her. In the end, she comes to an agreement with Willow, and they start a throuple that meets all of their needs.

Staff Sergeant Nancy Lavaun, USA: She’s a veteran of the Saudi Arabian conflict, where she served as a staff sergeant and was one of Eric’s angels of death. She is a shameless flirt and starts to make a play for Eric that I think will bear fruit in later novels. She’s a loving woman who desperately wants kids, but reality has continually prevented the conception. She, too, suffers from survivor’s guilt and struggles to adapt to life after combat.

Plot and Pacing

This story was well written, and I was saddened when I read the ending epilogue for this book. I wanted to spend more time in this awesome world, so I bought the rest of these books and continued reading. Any book that has you this invested is plotted out to perfection. This concept (read plot) for a first contact scenario was unique; I’ve honestly not yet read something like it before. I’ve read hundreds of science fiction novels, maybe thousands. But this was a new one for me, and my only regret was not thinking of it first. In this paradigm, the aliens show up to quarantine humanity, claiming that we were ‘too violent.’ Their solution proved them to be even more aggressive than the races they trap. They created a gladiatorial system, putting portals linking all of the quarantined worlds together, then watching them slaughter each other for survival as their technology is stripped from them by constant conflict. I think that these aliens are evil and hope to see them get their comeuppance. Any being who can sit and watch the chaos and carnage that they cause isn’t benevolent. I suspect that over half of the world’s population is killed in the opening gambit. The world just gets darker and more intriguing from there, but it kept me on my toes and reading.

Now, let’s discuss the pacing… it was extremely well executed! The story progressed in a logically coherent manner, with appropriate interspaced lulls in the action for spicy time, character development, and world-building. Sure, the sex was not as prominent here as it is in some of the other Marcus Sloss books I’ve enjoyed, but I was not left feeling cheated. Like all of the best stories, this one wasn’t all action, and it wasn’t all sex. But if I broke it down, I’d say this was 40% world-building and base-building as they struggled to adapt to their new reality. Then another 40% of this book was action, as they fought the new aliens, or we got flashbacks of Eric’s wartime jaunt through Saudia Arabia. Finally, the remaining 20% was the sex and romance between the women in Eric’s harem. I felt like this was a perfect ratio, and it left me wanting more when the end credits rolled. What more can we ask from any novel?

Audiobook Quality

This one is a bit harder to write nice things about. The narrators, Jack Douglas and Alexa Roosevelt did an amazing job. Their accents and pacing were amazing. Some of the voices and accents made me chuckle and kept me engaged. However, there were a lot of audio issues in the postproduction. There were places where background noise came through or a random zipper sound. There were static and popping sounds and, finally, places where a line was randomly repeated. Oh, and a few places where they read the wrong word in a sentence; I counted a handful of those, and it could’ve been what was on the page in book one before secondary edits. Despite those issues, and they were frustrating, I kept listening because the story was engaging. If you’re an audio or die listener, then I suggest the omnibus, so you get the most bang for your buck!

Sizzle Factor

The sexy time scenes in this book were well-written, though they were relatively vanilla. There were only two kinky things in these books, though I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. There were the dominance and submission vibes from Willow and Perci, as they submitted to Eric, which was a lot of fun and barely above vanilla after the 50 Shades of not as good as this genre books hit mainstream. Then there was also the breeding kink, which felt natural for a world that just had its population cut in half by the capricious aliens that created the gates and tormented the galaxy. While the prose during these scenes was blunt, leaving very little to the imagination, there weren’t enough of them for my tastes. They were there, but I just liked these characters and wanted more. I want to stress, though, that I really liked the scenes that we had in this novel. It had sizzling levels of awesomeness! Seriously, this style of prose is what I’ve come to accept this as Marcus’ authorial voice in action… err, in motion? I just wanted it to last forever!

Overall

First, let me say from the jump that I really loved this novel. I enjoyed this book enough to buy the rest of the series in e-book and audiobook. The cyberpunk genre isn’t something I normally enjoy. Well, I haven’t enjoyed it in the past but if this is the genre, I’m in! It was a lot of fun to see what enhanced humanity might look like. I like stories that make me think, and in this one, you got to consider the true nature of humanity and when we stop being homo sapiens sapiens. Seriously, it was fun to consider what we might become as we fight for survival in a strange new reality.

They tell us that we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Hogwash! How else are we supposed to judge a book by how well it catches our eyeballs? So, the cover of this novel caught my peepers and sucked me in long enough to read the blurb. I liked the cyberpunk image; it let me know what to expect, which is the roll of the book cover. I think you’ll love the image; it is of what I took to be Willow and Eric, full of all of the cool gizmos added onto their form. Fuck yeah, a sexier and kinkier Inspector Gadget!

While the art sucked me in, the prose kept me hooked! I feel like the author, Marcus Sloss, has an expansive vocabulary. He doesn’t use big words to say simple things or use a thesaurus to make the writing ‘better.’ Nope, when the author shows us his expansive vocabulary, I get the impression that it is just how he speaks. It was a shock to hear that prose because you never expect that in a popcorn guilty read genre. I loved that this book shows that this genre can be so much more!

Okay, let’s dive deeper into this novel! I loved that this was a progression story where we watch ‘the community’ grow and thrive despite the insanity of the alien invasion. We watched the residents of Forward Operating Base, or FOB, Mansion adapt to this new portal system where death lurks around every corner, survival isn’t guaranteed, and the future looks bleak. We watched them build up their base, which was a lot of fun to experience. I will say this book made me want to up my prepping game, but that’s an article for another post!

Speaking of leveling up, I enjoyed seeing the new alien technology as it was carried through the portal and used against them. I can’t wait for book two where they explore this alien supermarket of tech awesomeness. I hope we get some cool alien pets and allies, but this is dystopian, so they’re probably just going to give them alien STDs or something. Montezuma’s Revenge, but from outer space! I kid, I hope… anyway, let’s move on!

Next, we consider the portals themselves. This was one of the most unique parts of this novel, and the universe this story exists. In many of the novels I’ve read, the ports were simple gates between two worlds. Sometimes they were permanent, and sometimes they were called into existence. But in this world, the gates are linked to ever-changing planets filled with violent aliens. The aliens sometimes invade to fight, but sometimes they come to trade. That meant that the characters had to endure a Russian roulette of what aliens they had to deal with as they struggle to survive. That hook was one of the things that I loved about this series!

Now, let us talk about the characters in this novel. I really loved that the main character, Evan, wasn’t instantly all-powerful. However, he started with survival skills that are easily explained by his background. He was a former soldier, someone who prioritized being prepared for anything and skilled in the outdoors, which is significant in our increasingly urban and soft society. That fact of modernity was emphasized and enhanced in this future earth from this series.

Since I said that Eric was a combat veteran, let us dive in. His unit was intentionally left behind after America pulled out of its war in Saudia Arabia. To make it home, to survive, he did dark deeds and built something of a reputation as part murdering monster, the true murder hobo of song and lore. But he also deeply cared for the people entrusted to his care. He was a consummate leader of men (and women), felt loyal to the soldiers under his command. In return, he earned their undying loyalty.

In addition to being a general badass from the start, Eric had lost his hand and was gifted with a cybernetic replacement from the US Army. This gave him extra power and strength, which he used to his full advantage. We see these enhancements in a few of his other soldiers as well. Perci had her cybernetic eye, while Becky and Torrez had their enhanced legs. These assets were used to make them more combat-effective, above and beyond what a normal base human could do.

Oh, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the reoccurring darkness and PTSD that haunt Eric as he struggles to deal with what he had to do to survive his Odyssey home after the government abandoned him. He doesn’t wallow in his painful past, instead pushing back the intrusive thoughts and memories of his wartime experience. However, he doesn’t pretend it never happened. I hate it when that happens in fiction; only a sociopath can do those things without remorse. Instead, Eric suffers the survivor’s guilt, the anguish over the dark deeds one does in war, and the consequences that modernity suffers when we go primal. And sure, he is maybe a tad psychotic… but in a way that keeps his people alive and thriving.

Okay, now we can get random about parts of the world that I liked. This is the first world that I’ve seen where the main character gets a hand-up with his progression or base building from an outside source. In this case, Perci’s mother started them off with as many supplies and weapons as they could acquire in the few days of warning that they had. But they were rushed, so we were able to watch them build the base together. I loved that; it was fun as I imagined how I might do that in the same situation.

With the humans out of the way, let’s talk about the aliens. I loved the diversity and weirdness of the various alien races we experienced. Some of them were analogs of human animals, but others were just strange, and I was here for it. I expected some level of standardization, but the multitude of variations kept me on my toes. Everything from giant flies to an army of deer men. Maybe I did wonder what said aliens might taste like, would they make good venison jerky… but I mean, do space cows make good steaks? Enquiring minds want to know!

Now, I mentioned it in the sizzle section, but too often, the harem books are little more than porn. Hey, I like those too, but sometimes I want more, and Marucs delivered. This novel was an apocalypse survival story that happened to have unique relationships (harems) and a few sexy moments. The world-building was spot on, the action was well-written, and I could visualize all of it! Seriously, it’s an amazing book!

Now, for the elephant in the room… the plot! Some might argue that it was too contrived, given how the main characters’ past prepared them for this new reality. However, I’m a military brat from a long line of them, and those types of people are normal to me. They’re my neighbors, friends, and people I served with in Iraq. I read some of the reviews who hated that Perci was so good at logistical stuff, but those people exist, and when it is your job in the military, you get trained to do it efficiently. Further, her mom was a business magnate, so some of those skills could be genetic gifts or the product of her upbringing. I dismiss those out of hand because I’ve met these people.

With that said, I try to weigh the good and the bad of novels, even the ones I love. Where the plot was contrived and a bit much was how he just happened to have the mega-wealthy girl who set things up. But in fiction, we suspend our disbelief on some things, and I was willing to go with the author because the rest of the setting and setup were so epically awesome!

Overall, I liked how Marcus set up the plot, and for once, I couldn’t find a way I would have done it differently. Well, except for the ending. He left us with a cliffhanger in the epilogue that made me want to throttle him. The only reason he lives is that the series is finished! Okay, I say that tongue in cheek… but I hate cliffhangers when I’m forced to wait too long for some resolution.

There’s so much more I’d like to say about this book, but we don’t allow spoilers to slip through our spear line. So, with that… I’ll wrap this one up and put it to bed. As we close, I’d like to request that if you loved this book too, go over to Amazon and leave a review. This is a small thing, but it really does help authors find visibility in the algorithms that rule us all. Since I’m hooked on this genre, I want the creators I’m growing to love to be able to give us more of this literary crack that’s piped straight into my earholes!