fantastic book, and well paced, i really prefer books that zip along, and this one did not disappoint, believable characters bought vividly to life.

This is the Author's first book in the Archangel One series , the sequel to the Odyssey One series .

Humanity has reached an uneasy truce with the Empire - one which cannot last , war looks inevitable .
Tasked with going 'rogue' to collect intelligence on their foe , Commander Stephen Michaels at the helm of the Archangel Squadron , disguises themselves as Mercenaries - they head deep into enemy space .
When every thing they discover exposes the Empires' true identity and purpose they realise that Humanity might
just not survive .

A thoroughly entertaining Sci Fi book with great worldbuiling and characters that you are willing to invest time with .

I was given an arc of the book by netGalley and the Publisher in exchange for an honest review

The sequel to the Odyssey One series continues in this epic space opera of humanity's struggle with the established galactic empire, a struggle begun as they first ventured beyond their solar system and discovered both new enemies and allies. Currie builds his story line with multiple sub plots and interconnected characters with both intriguing space battles and developing conflict. His plot line is engaging with action moving quickly forward giving the reader a fast paced, exciting journey.

(See all my Book Reviews) - Author Evan Currie (http://evancurrie.ca) published the novel “Archangel One” in 2019. Mr. Currie has published more than 30 novels. This is the first of a new "Archangel One" series.

I categorize this novel as ‘PG’. The story is set in the far future. While Commander Stephen Michaels is the primary character, there are many others who are key to the story.

Humans have achieved an uneasy truce with the Empire. There is no doubt that the war with the Empire will resume, it is just a question of when.

Michaels is leading the Archangel Squadron. The Archangels, now reformed with new ships and tactics, are given a new mission. To gather intelligence on the Empire they take on the role of pirates. That gives them both the chance to inflict damage on the Empire and to make new allies.

I enjoyed the 6+ hours I spent reading this 268-page Science Fiction Space-Opera. While this is a separate series, it continues the events in Currie's "Odysseus One" series. While this novel reads well on its own, I do recommend reading the six novels in the "Odysseus One" series first. Many of the characters are also in those novels. This is the 5th novel of Mr. Currie's I have read. I have to say that they all have been enjoyable. I do like the selected cover art. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

You can access more of my book reviews on my Blog ( https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/).

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

I got about 20% into this book, but alas, I did not finish. Maybe it's because it's a spinoff of another series and I just don't know the characters and backstory? I don't know. All I know is I found it confusing and it didn't hold my attention. Sorry Evan! Thanks for the review copy NetGalley and sorry it took so long to write this review!

Well,I made a mistake and did not do proper research on this before picking it up. Apparently there is a larger series called Odyssey One,where we meet all the characters and get a start of the story and its development. Archangel One is a start of a spinoff of that series but really it felt very much like a continuation of it because the characters from Odyssey One appeared quite frequently and had adventures and battles. So,in a way I probably missed a lot by not having a necessary background on the world and its workings,but it didn't stop me from enjoying the story nonetheless.
We mostly follow Commander Stephen Michaels and his crew,who have to go deeply undercover pretending to be mercenaries to gain intel. We also have chapters following the characters on Odysseys as well as chapters following the antagonists of this world. All of that was highly entertaining. Stephen is quite a reckless person who comes up with all sorts of crazy strategies that I never knew what he would do next.
At times the writing got overly technical and I found myself not fully understanding what was happening. Also,this felt like a prologue to the main story,the characters barely start being mercenaries in this one,so I think the next books will be even more interesting.
Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I would like to start off by saying that sci-fi is usually a hit or miss genre for me. I tend to really enjoy it, or not like it at all.

On top of that, I found out that this is the first book in an offshoot series by Evan Currie. The main series being Odyssey One. I have not read ANY of these previous books. But now, I want too.

Honestly, you don't <i>need</i> to read the Mother series first. Currie does an amazing job with recounting enough of past history to correlate with current state of affairs. Which is great. I didn't feel lost at all, and I want to read the Mother series to gain further insights.

If I were to describe this in one, simple, sentence ... SPACE PIRATES!!!! Not an accurate term, however, this is the facade that is being played by a covert, military task force, to go in deep (the deep black of space that is), to gain allies and Intel against the Empire.

There is a wild cast of characters, the top of the task force being Commander Stephan "Stephanos" Michaels. Who is just batshit crazy at times. Or so it seems. He lives his work, and is thoroughly playing the part of a Pirate. Ahem. Privateer. He was an Archangel (think Top Gun) in the war, and with this new crew, they are using ships 10x better than the Archangels.

The engineer of these new ships is Mila, a Priminae (humanoid but not human). She doesn't quite understand the intricacies of her colleagues, but she tries.

We do see Commadore Eric Weston. He is from the Mother series, Odyssey One. And we learn of the presence on the ship. Almost like it is the ship.

There are many more characters of question and of heart.

I love that the Admiral us a woman, and the story is told in multiple POVs, on all sides of the fence. Including the Empress herself.

I was blown away by this, and highly recommend it to anyone who loves sci-fi!

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. Like others I really thought this would be a fun space opera type read. I ended up DNF because it just did not hold my attention. The build up of the special fleet to take the fight to the enemy was just too confusing.

I really, really wanted to like this book. I ended up DNFing it and at best I can give it 1.5 stars. While the story of space battles between Terrans and an Empire determined to destroy us is really compelling, the storytelling is borderline rubbish. If you love a book with 95% technical exposition rather than storytelling that rapidly (or even interestingly) advances the story, this is the book for you. While the science portion of this SF story is not overly related to any science that currently or theoretically exists, it is entertaining to read the attempt to connect the SF to something the reader may be familiar with.

I got so bored that I started skipping around trying to find some part of the book that "showed" instead of "told" me what was going on - I did not find a single instance of engaging storytelling that would let me get absorbed in the book.

An interesting and entertaining read. I received this book from the publisher and Netgalley for review and I thank them.
Well written and edited book which made it a pleasure to read. The characters come alive and the situations are understandable. The addition of Ulysses adds intrigue to the story and leads the reader to want to know more.
Summary of situation is war with a much larger enemy, while stalled at the moment can resume at any time. Humans developed a new war spaceship and under the leadership of their most daring pilot, the crew goes undercover as mercenaries or pirates, whichever one works to spy out the enemies plans. There are great action scenes , nerve shattering decisions and all the time the alien entity in the background, learning from them, helping them, but how much of the why does he really understand.

I’ve read the first seven books in the Odyssey One series and have gotten to know all the characters well over the years. In Archangel One, Evan Currie takes the Odyssey One chief pilot and elevates him to the flight commander of a new rouge flight group made up of deadly small superfast spacecraft. The mission of the flight group is to gather intelligence on The Empire, an old and large multi-solar system human race that attacked Earth and Primenae forces in the Odyssey One Series.

While calling on the familiar Odyssey One’s Captain Wesson at the beginning of the book, and touching base on his current mission at different points in the book, Archangel One primarily about the former chief pilot, Stephanos. In this book, Stephanos decides to identify himself to one of The Empires out worlds as a mercenary for hire. He helps this outer world government overcome an attack by one of its enemies overcoming its superior force. Stephanos’ hope with this mercenary engagement is to build up a reputation in that part of space as a valuable ally while not fully disclosing his fleet’s full capabilities nor its true spying purpose.

Archangel One is a high action book with many space battles and some unconventional, pushing the envelope flying, by Stephanos. In the end, his and his fleet’s rogue tactics escape a sizable Empire patrol and thus cement a reputation as a potentially valuable mercenary force to the outer worlds.

I expect that this new series will be just as good as the author’s Odyssey One books and already have the second book in the series, Archangel Rising, on my ‘’To Read” list.

I am sad that I am Dnfing this book as I really wanted to love it.I read 25% of the book and was confused sometimes and not motivated to pick it up again.I will say the writing style was good and the idea as well but the number of characters and the pacing wasn't okay for me.Also many technical stuff was mentioned that wasn't explained and that made it harder for me to read.

This is one of those books that was not what I expected, and therefore failed to capture my interest on first blush. When i started the book over again, the story showed a bit more promise, which has made me interested in a second go-around with this tale.

The book started on an interesting premise but it was impossible to follow along with everything without having prior knowledge of the previous books. It felt like I was in the middle of something epic and didn’t expect that given the brief description of the book. From what I can tell, there’s a lot of solid intrigue here amidst heavy technological talk and an epic war along the lines of Star Wars. It was interesting but it just wasn’t possible for me to follow the characters and action closely enough to write a fully informed review.

The NetGalley blurb for this book says it's Book 1. But it isn't, really. Evan Currie has been writing about this universe for years. Without the backstory, this book made little sense to me. But that's not the main reason I tossed this book out the window. It's really badly written, so bad that every page has sentences highlighted for awfulness. I couldn't stand to read past about 10%. Where were the editors???

Oddly enough, this isn't listed as the 8th book in the Odyssey One series; but note that Archangel One is not a book you would want to read without having read the previous novels. That said, I loved every moment here and always enjoy reading each book as they come out. For this particular book, we're following a more tangential storyline (as in King of Thieves) since we follow Stephanos and his new crew as they do some privateering (aka "pirates") to uncover more intel about the Empire.

Stephan Michaels, better known as Stephanos, has followed Commodore Eric Weston through so many battles, both with the Archangel Squadron and then as navigator of the Oddyseus. But Weston has a special assignment for the Archangels: go deep undercover into outlying small star systems and find out more about the Imperials. The Empire is much stronger than the Priminae/Earth alliance and any information obtained could be vitally important.

Similarly to when we followed Captain Morgan and the Autolycus (who makes a brief appearance in this book) rather than the main characters, here we follow Stephanos as he takes specially refitted craft into the farthest reaches of the empire in order to make new 'friends' and discover more about the Empire's strengths and weaknesses. It means the small collection of ships will have to find conflicts, present themselves as aid, and then make associations that they can use later. Stephanos finds the perfect location in a small star system in which two small factions are fighting beneath the Empire's nose.

As with previous novels, we have some great humor, interesting battles, and a lot of gung ho spirit. Weston appears nominally this time; it's mostly about Stephanos and Mila and the Archangels (including Noir and Cardsharp). We also get a bit more backstory on Stephanos, a few more reveals about the nature of the empire, and a few contacts with Odysseus, who is now a 'teen' in spirit.

Archangel One (and in fact the whole Odyssey One series) isn't your dad's science fiction full of techy talk and high concepts; rather, it is a series that greatly owes much to the same elements that we loved in movies like Star Wars. The bad guys behave very similarly to the Star Wars Empire officers, almost comically so. But at heart, it is military sci fi, of a very North American feel. And it's just a fun ride always that is easy to follow and something you feel good after reading. I greatly look forward to the next in the series. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

Normally, I wouldn’t review something that I only read about 10% of before DNFing but as there was a pretty specific thing I had an issue with I wanted to share.

So my issue with this book is straight up the writing. As I said I only read about 10% of this one before DNFing, so the writing might have improved after that, I don’t know. What I read though I found very difficult to get through.
Firstly, some of the writing was quite technical and I just didn’t understand what was being talked about. This is an adult Sci-Fi and I don’t have a tonne of experience with the genre or a tonne of knowledge. So, with all the technical terms I was a little lost.
Next was the speech between characters. It all felt very formal. Like there wasn’t emotion or meaning behind it and the conversations just felt forced and didn’t flow. I don’t know how else to describe it, so I hope you kinda understand what I mean.
Lastly, the writing itself was just bland. I just didn’t find myself interested or hooked in any way as the writing just felt flat.

I didn’t get far enough in to really have strong thoughts on the characters or plot yet but the writing is the reason I DNFd and I just wanted to share that.

A military scifi novel about a squadron of new high-powered spaceships and a plan to infiltrate the all-consuming Empire that rules over the galaxy. The Archangel ships are designed by Earth and its allies to fly faster and with more ease in controls than any fighter ever. Yet, the brunt force and shear number of the Empire’s force causes the Earth’s forces to get creative. Their idea: to go undercover as ‘privateers’ in order to find intelligence about the enemy.

Recruitment, training, and political details take up the first half of the book. And then the mission starts to take shape. I didn’t know that this books takes place in a world the author has written about in several series. He does give sufficient background to get the reader caught up to speed. It wasn’t that that hampered my enjoyment of the book…

I had two main problems with the book: questionable character choice and a heavy dose of the physics of flight. One of the Empire’s noblemen is introduced in the first several chapters of the book and at first I thought this was going to be one of those books where were get a point of view from both sides of the conflict. But the character disappears, not to be heard from for most of the novel. There’s also several entities that live of a couple of the ships that have the ability to read thoughts. I wasn’t really sure about their role in the book. As observers of human behavior?

The second criticism is more of a ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ issue. I can only handle so much of the ‘vector’ talk when in space, and this one was very heavy in all of it.

What I did like about this book is the problem solving of the crews. Their ingenuity and outside-the-box thinking kept them one step ahead of the Empire’s forces for much of the novel.

Ultimately, this one felt like “wrong book, wrong time” for me.

3 out of 5 stars.

Very good. The author is very prolific, and his talent shines thru with an interesting plot, good dialog, and some humor. Recommended for military sci-fi fans.

I really appreciate the advanced copy for review!!

An interesting take on space with filled with competent characters rather than jusr one one hit villians.