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The Icarus Changeling (The Icarus Series Book 4) Kindle Edition


AN EASY ASSIGNMENT INSTEAD TURNS HARD AND LEADS TO A STRING OF MURDERS, AND A RACE AGAINST AN ALIEN ENEMY

Gregory Roarke—former bounty hunter, former Trailblazer, current agent for the ultra-secret Icarus Group—has received a new assignment: locate a suspected but as-yet undiscovered teleportation portal on the backwater colony world of Alainn.

The rival Patth are also searching for the device, and have considerably more resources at their disposal. Fortunately, Roarke has Selene and her incredibly sensitive Kadolian sense of smell. On paper, it should be a straightforward enough job.

But that was before there was a murder in the small town of Bilswift . . . and another one . . . and the discovery that the Patth are already on the scene and have narrowed the search to a heavily forested area in the hills and mountains east of town.

Most disturbing of all is the discovery that one of Selene’s people, a Kadolian teenaged boy named Tirano, is working at one of Bilswift’s fish markets. A boy who may have lost his parents before his proper socialization was completed. A boy who may be connected to both the murders and the Patth.

A boy who may be the potentially dangerous wild card that the Kadolians call changelings.

At the publisher’s request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

Praise for Timothy Zahn:

“Zahn fans will enjoy the variety of small-unit combat scenes in the action-packed third and final Cobra Rebellion military SF adventure . . . [a] gripping series.” —Publishers Weekly

“Zahn keeps the story moving at a breakneck pace, maintaining excitement.” —Publishers Weekly

“. . . you can count on Timothy Zahn for three things: clean, sparse prose; good pacing; and great action scenes. The first book in the Cobra War series hits all those marks in admirable style and makes for a quick, entertaining sci-fi novel.” —BlogCritics

“[Conqueror’s Heritage] is another finely wrought space adventure . . . [with] social, political, and emotional complications, all of which Zahn treats with his usual skill.” —Booklist

“Zahn paints every detail [in Angelmass] with gleamy realism . . . scientific dialogue that streams with starship hardware and military trooper talk . . . immensely appealing.” —Kirkus Reviews

Timothy Zahn is a Hugo Award winner and the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, Heir to the Empire, as well as the best-selling Star Wars: Thrawn series of novels. Born in Chicago, he earned a B.S. in physics from Michigan State University and an M.S. in physics from the University of Illinois. He sold his first story to Analog in 1978 and immediately attracted attention as a new writer of science fiction based on real, cutting-edge science. Baen published his popular Cobra trilogy in one volume. His other popular series include the Conqueror and Dragonback novels. With David Weber and Thomas Pope, he is the author of novels A Call to Duty, A Call to Arms, A Call to Vengeance, and A Call to Insurrection. Zahn has written more than 50 novels, including the recent Cobra Rebellion series entries Cobra Outlaw and Cobra Traitor. Zahn has a huge social media presence with over 10k followers on Facebook.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Timothy Zahn is a Hugo Award winner and the author of the New York Times #1 bestseller, Heir to the Empire, as well as the best-selling Star Wars: Thrawn series of novels. Born in Chicago, he earned a B.S. in physics from Michigan State University and an M.S. in physics from the University of Illinois. He sold his first story to Analog in 1978 and immediately attracted attention as a new writer of science fiction based on real, cutting-edge science. Baen published his popular Cobra trilogy in one volume. His other popular series include the Conqueror and Dragonback novels. With David Weber and Thomas Pope, he is the author of novels A Call to Duty, A Call to Arms, A Call to Vengeance, and A Call to Insurrection. Zahn has written more than 50 novels, including the recent Cobra Rebellion series entries Cobra Outlaw and Cobra Traitor.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0D2M58JBL
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Baen Books; 1st edition (July 2, 2024)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 2, 2024
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1594 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 388 pages
  • Customer Reviews:

About the author

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Timothy Zahn
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Timothy Zahn is the Hugo Award-winning author of more than forty original science fiction novels and the bestselling Star Wars trilogy Heir to the Empire, among other works. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
29 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2024
Every twist and turn through this latest journey with Roarke was fantastic. There just needs to be more stories in the Spiral world. The tech … the characters … the world … perfect. I want to start the next story now!
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2024
No spoilers, but the ending was unexpected. There were hints at the end that there will be another installment. We'll see.

Top reviews from other countries

Moe Sasseville
4.0 out of 5 stars What could have been a great entry really falls off towards the end.
Reviewed in Canada on July 8, 2024
Each novel in this series is a completely different beast from the one before. Just when you start thinking that a trope is about to be over-used the novel completely does away with it. This is by far the most personal of the stories so far...and it could have been great if it wasn't for the ending feeling bloated.

The Icarus aspects of this story are mainly secondary to the overall plot, and while it's in the background, this is about the duo of Roarke and Selene and how they deal with issues when things get personal.

It's a fun read, like the other books in the series it's mostly a murder-mystery, but one that doesn't span lightyears and goes up against the biggest and baddest people in the universe. It's a great change of pace after multiple novels where the protagonists were seemingly standing alone against the power players that should be able to crush them with a thought.

The one thing about this novel is that it mostly feels like a diversion from the main plot. Some big new concepts are introduced right in the end, but it's something that could have been explained away in another novel. There's a few times in the last quarter of the book where the plot can feel a bit stretched...like this was originally a short story that got stretched into novel-length. There's a point towards the end, where it feels like the ending is set up...and then we got on what amounts to pointless diversion of about 50 pages. It's not bad or unentertaining writing...it just feels like a pointless diversion. Roarke who is usually clever and sharp just goes on this last minute adventure...just because he wanted to confirm a fairly irrelevant point and almost gets himself killed in the process. Once you get over that sequence though...the novel lands the landing...but a lot of the tension is lost.

Overall, the novel is the literary equivalent of a "bottle episode" in a TV series. It's a good enough change of pace, and it's a pretty fun; but it doesn't really move the plot forward significantly. It's not surprising that the next novel is due out shortly, I wouldn't be surprised if the novel was either split into two separate stories, or that Changeling was originally a short story to give some background, but ended up introducing too many new plot threads, and ended up being bulked up to its own separate entry.

If you've read the other novels in the series, this is one that is worth reading although I would say that you could skip over it and not really miss much. I'll probably skip over it in future readings even though I enjoyed it, I don't know if this is a story I need to read again. This was a tough rating for me...what is good is great...but there's some bloat here that take away from what could have been a sleek, and well delivered novella.

Solid writing, decent-plot, and a few minor fireworks that set up a big story in the next novel.

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