Book Review: Freedom Express by Terry Mixon
Hey Space Cadets, here is the next installment in my series of book reviews. This is a book that I initially bought just to support an author whose other books I loved. It was written by Terry Mixon as a post-apocalyptic space opera world set in the not-too-distant future. To be honest, I forgot that it was in my library until Amazon recommended it to me. In digging into it, I realized that I already owned it! So, I downloaded it and gave it a listen. I wasn’t sorry, that’s for sure!
Before we go any further, let me show my bias. I loved Terry Mixon’s Empire of Bones Series and his Last Hunter Series that he co-wrote with JN Chaney. I was already a fan of his work when I started this novel. I went in expecting to like this series. It’s written like many of his books, in a 3rd person POV with multiple main characters. If you don’t love that, this novel isn’t the book for you. However, this is my jam, and I wasn’t disappointed.
Okay, about this series. There are currently four books written in this setting. I’m already invested and hoping for more! I’ve heard rumors that Terry might continue telling epic adventures in this universe when his writing schedule clears up. I have high hopes, since I want more from this awesome author. I’ve met Terry in person and he’s as nice there as he is online. He truly engages with his audience and values them. He’s thankful that they let him get paid to share these romps through the voids of space.
Now, more about the author, Terry Mixon. He’s a former US Army crew chief, where he worked on keeping the whirly birds in the air. He was a non-commissioned officer in the 101st Airborne Division. I too was a sergeant in that division, so points to him! In case you didn’t know, leg lives matter. After he left the Army, he spent some time working for NASA. He played Solitaire working alongside the flight controllers in the Mission Control Center at the NASA Johnson Space Center.
His job was to support the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, and other human spaceflight projects for almost two decades. I have it on good authority that he worked for the department that helps take the moon landing. He was the ‘flat earth’ ambassador to the Chief Administrator of the space program. Over the years he’s shared proof that we faked the entirety of NASA’s supposed space race, but apparently, we’re no longer able to show evidence against the insane global earth cabal. Come on people, censorship is bad, am I right?
Now that I’ve triggered half of the world, I’ll leave it to you to decide what lies you’ll accept and which you’ll ignore. What I will say is that Terry’s knowledge of space travel that he learned from working with NASA showed in how believable the future space program in this world was. I totally bought into the idea that he’d consulted subject matter experts on the topic. He faked it better than I’ve seen in quite a while.
The basic premise of this series centers around the main characters’ quest to take humanity to the stars. Now, in this sequel novel those characters are on their little jaunt through the solar system, visiting Mars and dead asteroids and everything in between. I loved seeing the main character, Harry Rogers, becoming an unconventional spaceship captain. No naval experience, just a trigger puller of the snake eating variety turned into humanity’s first interstellar ship’s captain. I loved seeing an Army boy made good in the space navy. Space Force Guardians, eat your heart out!
If the first book was getting the private space program off the ground, this sequel was about pushing the ship to the limits while shenanigans carried out across the earth they left behind. That all happened against the backdrop of political gamesmanship and political intrigue. It was fun to see both sides of the story, though it sometimes felt like Terry jumped away from the scenes right as it got interesting. I am sure that’s just the drug pushing nature of my crack dealer… I mean favorite author. Well, same same, but you know what I mean. Whatever, I loved this book too, so read the rest of this review and then read the book!
The Story
The main characters have outgrown their simple exploratory mission, with goals at galactic mining. During this book, Harry Rogers makes it onto the first manned mission to Mars. He becomes the first one to step onto the Red Planet and has inspirational words, but he wasn’t quite up to Neil Armstrong, but he did good for a snake eater. But he has other firsts, as he leaves the solar system, visits alien planets and explores alien spaceships.
While he chased the alien secrets, Jessica Cook chased the miracles of alien technology with all of her nerdy friends. She uncovers tech so advanced that it might as well be magic. But she’s an egghead herself and figures it out, at least enough that she can use the technology. She can drive the car without understanding the combustion engine, after all. Bad analogy, since a space engineer probably does understand that engine, but you’re picking up what I’m putting down, I’m sure.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. While Harry and Jessica do their thing, Clayton’s back on earth. He has to protect his assets from American seizure. Piracy via the nation state, but that might be quibbling. Anyway, he’s running around the globe to make things happen. He’d bought a country, which the UN recognizes, giving him diplomatic immunity from America. He does that to resist the tyranny of the American political corruption system. Through him, we continue to see how dystopian the political system really is in this world. We see just how far the mighty US empire has fallen. His subplot storyline gives this novel a little bit of a political thriller vibe, something on par with Clive Cussler or Tom Clancy and I enjoyed it.
But they’re not the only players in the game. Their estranged family, in the form of Nathan and Kathleen Bennett, are also gallivanting around the globe. They’re trying to outmaneuver Humanity Unlimited and its CEO Clayton Rogers. They do everything to make it happen, from rape and murder, to the wanton slaughter of people unfortunate enough to get in their way. In this case, they killed terrorists to cover up their crimes. I suppose they inadvertently did something good? However, in their quest for their own mission they’re stumbling into things they don’t understand. Actions that could potentially destroy humanity. It’s not hyperbolic; they could potentially invite the alien menace back to earth. That scourge would wipe them out once and for all, so keeping them away is the goal.
Now that we’ve talked about the book’s basic concept, let us dive into the writing! Gotta give it to this author; his novel was chock-full of quality visualization. You can definitely imagine yourself in this future dystopian world that he created! He described things across the sensory spectrum; sights, sounds, smells and even how bleak the world felt. While I could vaguely visualize all of the characters, I’d love it if Terry described the characters’ physical traits in more detail. He kept it light on the details, with just enough specifics to allow you to visualize it for yourself.
In Freedom Express, Terry did a great job pacing this book. He balanced the explanation of this future world with the need to move a story along. And boy howdy, this story was a rip-roaring good time. Like I said, this political thriller was a romp through the dystopian future. This book didn’t have a single place where I couldn’t picture the scenery, the equipment or space being. I filled in a lot of the details myself, but Terry gave me the scaffolding to make it work. Everything felt tangible and I enjoyed the setting, the prose and the people.
In summary, I didn’t find any issues with the descriptions and was impressed by the literary skills of Terry. I wish he were more descriptive, but he gave you enough to form your own visual image. If you want a pulp era space opera that mated with the post-apocalyptic genre, then this is the book for you!
The Characters
This wasn’t a story where there was only one main character, instead there was an ensemble cast of disparate personalities. I was pleasantly surprised at how well each character was portrayed, given the large cast of main characters. Then throw in the numerous secondary peeps who flitter on and off screen, well hat tip to the author’s skill. Everyone had individual personalities, none of them felt like they were cardboard cut outs. Oh, and none of them were talking heads with no personalities. Given the familial relations of many of the main cast, any similarities can be explained away. To be clear, there were only a few of those likenesses. The ones there were minor and felt intentional. I guess I’m saying that I really loved these characters. The military characters reminded me of my past life as a grunt and the nerdy academic, well she was every female I met in grad school studying history for fun.
Harry Rogers: He is the son of Clayton Rogers and Kathleen Bennett and the brother of Nathan Bennett. He’s a former super-secret squirrel, an ex-Green Beret who works for his security company, Liberty SOG. That is, until he gets brought into an ownership stake of Humanity Unlimited. During this novel, he serves as an American Army veteran version of James Bond turned Indiana Jones. He travels the galaxy, doing the explorer thing as he tries to learn what he can. Once he’s aware of the alien threat, he’s on a crusade to protect humanity by finding technological solutions to humanity’s lack. While he joined to protect Jessica, they split up doing separate sub-missions in this book. He’s the voice of the worldly man, the foil to Jessica’s more innocent personality, though she’s less so now. More than that, he’s a fully fleshed out character outside of his counterbalancing the academic character. He’s shown to be an idealist, who dislikes his dad because of his cutthroat business practices. Except, his idealism is tempered by his willingness to spill blood to protect those he deems worthy. During the course of this novel, he takes on the role of commanding officer of the Liberty Station spaceship and leads the ex-military forces providing security. He seems to grow into his role as a leader of eggheads, vastly different than leading Spec Ops troops across the globe. In the next two novels I expect that we’ll see him continuing to grow into his role within the Humanity Unlimited Corporation. He’s already outgrown command of Liberty Station, but big things are in store for him!
Jessica Cook: She’s an employee of Rainforest LLC, working for their space company. She’s a space engineer and designed the Liberty Station conversion and revitalization. She served as the Chief Engineer and was written as an extremely competent woman in her chosen field. She isn’t a Mary Sue; she has things that she isn’t good at. But where she’s good, she’s very good. During the course of this novel, we see her skills in space and in space walking. She’s becoming more visibly awesome in this novel, as she grows and improves. What else will she get better at? She forces herself to handle high stress situations where life and death are on the line as she explores the solar system. She encounters aliens and their descendants. She does so without panicking or whining, Jess just grits her teeth and drives on. Her technical and leadership skills improve, as she becomes the executive officer for Liberty Station and leads portions of the exploration. I like that we see her becoming even more well-rounded, a true Renaissance man. Well, Renaissance Woman? She’s written in the way you want a female heroine to be portrayed; she’s competent, not a man with tits.
Clayton Rogers: He is the ex-husband of Kathleen Bennett and the father of Harry and Nathan. He owns and runs Rainforest LLC, an international company who seems to have their fingers in every pie. Part of his business used to be his ex-wife’s family business that he seized in a hostile takeover. During this novel, he takes a more active role. He is no longer a means to the end, instead he’s becoming a political player in this global quest for space superiority. Aside from his familial roles, he is there to allow Harry and Jessica do the things and fund the fun. He’s an idealist who invested heavily in his dream of a post-Terran humanity. We hear from him and Harry that he’s done bad things, but I’m unconvinced. I think he’s more of the grandfatherly Mister Rogers type by what we’ve seen so far. He still reads as a likeable fella, but only time will tell. So far, he’s a politician and he does a lot of good for the Humanity Unlimited corporation.
Nathan Bennett: He is the son of Clayton Rogers and Kathleen Bennett and the brother of Harry Rogers. He’s a consummate asshole who is the mustache twirling bad guy in this book. He isn’t evil for the sake of it, instead he comes off as just a psychotic sociopath who gets off of his dark deeds. He engages in the struggle snuggle with females, kills wantonly and generally does dirty deeds for the fun of it. He kills when it causes more harm than good, which is why I read him as crazy. Sometimes a character has to kill, it’s understandable, even if done by the bad guy. It seems like his driving motivation is his hatred for his older brother and his father. It's unclear why he hates them, but given who his mom is, I wonder if parental alienation was at play? Regardless, he is an evil megalomaniacal idiot, and I can’t wait until he dies in a brutally glorious fashion. In this novel, we do get to see him as a more competent operator, making him more than just the evil ne’er-do-well.
Kathleen Bennett: She is the ex-wife of Clayton Rogers and the mother of Harry and Nathan. She owns and runs BenCorp, an international company who seems to have their fingers in every pie. She’s got a lot in common with her ex, but she’s a psychotic and evil version of him. She’s the bad guy in this series, the puppet master who doesn’t bother hiding it. Except, she works through proxy todies who do the dirty work so she can keep her hands clean. We see more of her in this book, as the current situation forced her to get her hands dirty. She couldn’t work through her youngest son, Nathan. I hope she plays a larger and more evil role in the next novel! We need to see her get her comeuppance.
Josh Queen: He’s the Secretary of State for the United States of American in the not-too-distant future. He’s a bipartisan asshole, who represent the kind of person that both parties hate. If you take the political party affiliation away from name, absent that loyalty, people will want to punch him. He’s a schemer, trying to angle up towards the vice presidency. He appears to care more about his own political ascent than he does his country. He comes off as someone who loves the sound of his own voice and leads his ego, rather than any deep abiding love for God and country. He laments the loss of America’s standing in this future world but becomes part of the problem. Overall, he’s a bit player in this novel, but I suspect he’ll be a bigger deal in the future books.
The World
Freedom Express is the second book in the Humanity Unlimited Series, and I absolutely loved it. The world was flushed out, and everything was explained in a way that made sense. The universe was consistent, with just enough of the mundane facets of life thrown in that it all felt grounded in this reality. It helps that half of the novel was set on Earth as we know it, sorta. I mean, a future version of Earth. But the other half is set in space and that’s where you see Terry’s space opera chops on full display.
Everything in this world made sense and sucked me deeper into the story. Some of the details seemed inconsequential, but those hooks just make me think that the larger mystery would continue to grow and expand. I hope the payoff is worth it, but Terry has skills so I am positive that it will. I really loved reading the scenes of everyone learning to maneuver in a zero-g environment. That was amusing to read, and that minor detail at the end of book one and early into book two paid off in the final showdown between Nathan and Harry on the gravity free Liberty Station at the end of this novel.
During those scenes, Terry showed his understanding of the science of space as he wove those details into the plot. If he lied, if he faked it, he did it so well that I bought in. Keep in mind that I barely made it out of Betty Crocker Calculus and for a science fiction nut, I am not very scientifically inclined. I can read a white paper, but I only understand things conceptually and in broad strokes. Terry built upon the legwork of the previous novel, but in these scenes, he added enough new details to make the setting pop. He fed us those details in a way that didn’t feel like an info dump. There was never anything he described that I couldn’t envision, or that felt like it wasn’t “real.”
Another aspect that I enjoyed about this world was how he showed the political aspect of this sci-fi thriller. There were enough similarities to modernity that I understood it. The world felt like home, but one viewed through the funhouse mirror. He kept the timeline far enough out that the readers political allegiances to modern parties didn’t stop them from enjoying Freedom Express. In fact, I don’t remember Terry mentioning a single political party. It was just one corrupt politician after another. There were generic liberals versus conservative, but those terms can and do shift over time. So, any inference to the D vs R would be internalized from the readers perspective. Instead of writing a story lauding one party over the other, Terry highlighted a corrupt system in a time when the American empire has fallen. She’s no longer a superpower and struggling to reassert her dominance. That made for some interesting reading and left me wanting more.
When describing the world, Terry was light on the details… but not so much that I was lost or experienced the floating head syndrome. I could always picture the scene in my head, watching it in the movie theater of my mind. Despite being a bubblegum summer mystery read, Terry has upped the bar of excellence, adding more sensory input to the mix, sights, sounds, smells, and feelings.
Overall, the world building was well done, and I was sold on the way it happened. It felt believable, and the characters fit within the universe Terry Mixon created. Like most of the stories I read, this one didn’t take itself too seriously, which allowed you to focus on the fun which is why I read in the first place. And nobody, and I mean nobody, does fun better than Terry ‘Moon Landing Faker’ Mixon.
Politics
This space thriller novel was all about politics and the consequences of corruption. The story is set in a world where America is a dying empire, the caliphates rule Europe and the world is in chaos with only India and China left as viable polities. I believe the word created by Terry Mixon was plausible, scarily so. It was well thought out and expertly executed. In this story we see the fallout of two larger-than-life personalities who hate each other after a bitter divorce. In their grudge match, their mega corps blunder around the globe in an unofficial war against each other. They leave dead bodies and destruction in their wake. But now the United States political class has caught up to their shenanigans. This was a future that could absolutely happen, which made the novel scarier. More believable, too. I have mixed feelings on how Future America was portrayed, but I know that the author was a patriot who served in the US Army. I don’t think the slightly evil America was because he hated his country, he just made a compelling prognostication about what the future might look like.
Content Warning
This novel would be appropriate for anyone over the age of 16. This is most certainly not a children's book; the amount of violence and implied rape marks this one for mature audiences only. None of that happened on screen, but it was certainly implied that it was going to happen after the scene faded to black. There was also a fair amount of gun play, as the bad guys did bad things, and the good guys made them pay with their lives. It definitely felt like something that felt worth mentioning. I know that this can be a sensitive issue for some families. It wasn’t overly gory by my standards, but your mileage may vary.
Narration
I enjoyed this book exclusively in the audiobook format. I’m become a huge fan of audiobooks! No lie, I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of stories read to me by top notch narrators. I’ve listened to dozens of awesome men and women read to me, but my favorite female narrator is Veronica Giguere. She could make reading the phonebook interesting. Now, let’s get into the nitty gritty with this novel! Like in the last novel, the only drawback was that some of the character transitions yanked me out of the story. Being forced to scramble and figure out who we’re following was jarring, but that could be a me issue. Freedom Express was written before everything went onto Audible, so it was written without the audiobook in mind. I checked and the ebook had visual cues that a transition was happening, so I don’t hold this against the audiobook.
Overall, the audiobook was well done, and the accents were consistent. The narrator did a fantastic job narrating this book. I don’t say that lightly, I already own every book by Terry Mixon that she’s produced. Veronica won’t bore you, or make you zone out because of her monotone or vocal fry. Did that make me sound smart? Because I have no clue about vocal fry, but I do know that Veronica puts together a fine narration. Her performance didn’t feel robotic like a machine was reading the novel to me. Listening to this book felt like a friend was sitting with me, reading an amazing story that she couldn’t put down. Only she made kind of cool voices, with believable accents that didn’t yank you out of the story.
Who is it for?
This book is for anyone who loves Stargate and Indiana Jones, with shades of Cain and Able thrown in for good measure. If you are a fan of political thrillers set in the near future, peppered with military action, this is for you. Throw in a budding alien menace, and you have a recipe for awesomeness!
Why buy it?
This is the story of the every-man academic type who stumbles into something bigger than herself. But it’s okay, she teams up with an ex-special forces guy who keeps her safe as she battles her way around the globe and into space. The concept alone was worth the price of entry. If you love a thrill ride through a worst-case post-apocalyptic future that turns into a space opera masterpiece, this is the novel for you!