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    Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 1: Dawn
    Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 1: Dawn
    Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 1: Dawn
    Audiobook11 hours

    Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 1: Dawn

    Written by Yoshiki Tanaka

    Narrated by Tim Gerard Reynolds

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    “The Golden Brat” Reinhard von Lohengramm, a military prodigy and admiral of the Galactic Empire, has ambitions beyond protecting the borders or even defeating the Empire’s enemies. He seeks to overthrow the old order and become a truly absolute—yet benevolent—dictator. His rival, the humble Yang Wen-li of the Free Planets Alliance, wishes to preserve democracy even if he must sacrifice his political ideals to defeat the Empire. Their political and military battles play out over a galactic chessboard in an epic saga fifteen centuries in the making!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    TranslatorDaniel Huddleston
    Release dateMar 8, 2016
    ISBN9781508218814
    Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 1: Dawn
    Author

    Yoshiki Tanaka

    Yoshiki Tanaka was born in 1952 in Kumamoto Prefecture and completed a doctorate in literature at Gakushuin University. Tanaka won the Gen’eijo (a mystery magazine) New Writer Award with his debut story “Midori no Sogen ni…” (On the Green Field…) in 1978 and then started his career as a science fiction and fantasy writer. Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Dawn, which translates the European wars of the 19th century to an interstellar setting, won the Seiun Award for best science fiction novel in 1987. Tanaka’s other works include the fantasy series The Heroic Legend of Arslan and many other science fiction, fantasy, historical, and mystery novels and stories.

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    Reviews for Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Vol. 1

    4/5

    59 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      The detail of the military ranks was impressive. Also all of the characters had very thoughtful names. The fact that this was originally in Japanese blows my mind, the translation made it seem like it was written in English originally.
    • 5/5
      Anyone familiar with the series (especially the 80s anime rather than the newer adaptation which keeps closer to the books but hasn't advanced much beyond the first) will know Legend of the Galactic Heroes as a rather ponderous, complex epic. It's not a style that everyone will enjoy, but while the story lacks the constant chapter-by-chapter tension that George R.R. Martin excels at in "A Song of Ice and Fire", it is an intelligent set-up to a much greater story that will inevitably contain many unexpected twists and turns.

      As one of the opposing protagonists - Yang Wen-li - states repeatedly, no one considers themselves the "bad guy" in their own narrative, and this is probably at the core of the novel's theme. There are no outright evil characters here. Many are misguided, egotistical or simply at odds with the two sympathetic protagonists for other reasons, but the story makes clear early on that it doesn't intend to fall into the trap of having a typical hero versus villain relationship. This pays off handsomely later on.

      The novel's main weakness is that half of it is, by necessity, dedicated to establishing the setting and the careers of the two main characters, Yang and the ambitious imperial (Prussians, but in space - Reinhard even outright invokes tactics used by Frederick the Great) noble Reinhard von Lohengramm. If you can get past the initial set-up, though, and enjoy an engaging war epic with a large cast of characters and some quite interesting narrative choices, the effort is definitely worth it.
    • 2/5
      It's bad and cheesy. The writing is clunky (I can't tell if it's the translator) and there are whole chapters that read like cliff notes or a history book with dry exposition. Characters are cartoonish, tension in the wholly predictable plot non-existant. What it's got going for it is how ridiculous it is.

      The plot boils down to a bunch of plucky rebels from the democratic alliance fighting space Hitler leading the Fourth Reich. Surprisingly little SF in this story, it's mostly about military intrigue with a sprinkling of medieval style battles (except in space!). Honestly, it would translate seamlessly into a medieval fantasy setting without losing anything.
    • 4/5
      While this book was published this year, it was originally published in Japan decades ago, and it shows. I still enjoyed the book, but it suffers from some pacing problems. It definitely avoids the "rah-rah military over sheeple civilians" problem some mil-SF runs into, though the best works of Japanese mil-sf tends not to have that problem.
    • 3/5
      Humanity is divided. The Galactic Empire is ruled by a dictator while the Free Planets Alliance desires democracy and autonomy from the Galactic Empire. The great imperial army will have none of that and seeks to force the rebels (Free Planets Alliance) back into the Galactic Empire. Two great military geniuses will face off again and again as this war rages on. Reinhard von Lohengramm fights for the Empire even as Yang Wen-li fights for the Alliance.This book held a lot of promise and I was pretty excited to get my hands on a review copy. However, I was underwhelmed by it. While we have the two main military geniuses, there are many, many side characters and more and more get pulled into the story as the tale progresses. However, most of them are given little more than a name and station; I often felt like they were merely being described as game pieces. I found that I never really got attached to any of the characters. So this made it difficult to care about their motives or the outcomes of the few action scenes.I was excited by the big sweeping background. There’s obviously generations of history built into the backstory of how this conflict came about. All of that comes through clearly. I was pretty intrigued by those characters that have engineered bits (like a replacement bionic eye) and the politics of the two factions concerning that. However, that turned out to be a very small part of the book and little was done with it. Much of the book is spent on characters contemplating the politics of the situation and this made the story rather slow for me.I did enjoy that Yang is a fan of tea and that his ward, Julian, is rather fussy about how to make Yang’s tea. There’s also plenty of ethnicities represented by the characters. However, there are few female characters and they are often in support roles and/or romance interests. Their looks were usually the first (and sometimes the only thing) mentioned. Some of them, like Yang’s aide de camp Fredericka Greenhill, were given additional attributes. Women are allowed to serve in both militaries, but only in background, non-combat roles. This made me sigh. First, it’s fiction and we’re in the 21st century and women can be cast in lead military roles without ruffling feathers. Second, when an entire gender is cast in only support roles, this makes those characters rather predictable and that can make the story predictable.The whole book was a meh for me. I have heard that this book first came out as a manga and I think that might be more interesting. I may or may not check that out at the library.I received a copy at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.The Narration: Tim Gerard Reynolds does a good job with the numerous accents. However, in between dialogue, he tends to fall into a monotone, making him sound a bit bored with the book too. I really liked how he made Julian sound young and fussy. I also loved how his accents weren’t necessarily dictated by a character’s last name or his looks. After all, it’s a big galaxy and an Asian looking man can sound like a Tennessee gentleman.