A Brother's Debt (Step Velkin Series) [Kindle Edition]

Karl Jones (Author)

Book Description

The start of a sci-fi adventure to rival Firefly, from the bestselling author of Shattered

If he'd known what he was getting himself into, Step would never have responded to his brother's latest plea for help. Now he's stuck in an unfamiliar sector of space flying a barely space-worthy ship as he works the wrong side of the law to pay off 'A Brother's Debt'.

Contains the bonus short horror, Lauren's Nightmare and a preview of my best selling thriller Shattered
A novel of 47,000 words
First in the Step Velkin series of adventures.

Also available by Karl Jones
Shattered (Thriller/Drama)
That Friday (Romance/Drama)
Devil's Spawn, Devil's Pawn (Paranormal/Action)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

In the dark of the night and the still of the evening you'll find Karl Jones writing furiously to exercise his dark muse to the delight of his fans. Specializing in Crime and Horror thrillers, he refers to himself as a loner, haunted by the stories he pens and driven to push the boundaries until all lovers of the genres have no choice but to sleep with one eye open. Karl explores the dark side of humanity and turns the stories of some of the most depraved into literature you'll have no choice but to read with one eye on the door and every light in the house on. Grab a sample if you dare...

Product Details

• File Size: 328 KB
• Print Length: 177 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1482589907
• Publisher: KSJ Publishing (April 21, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007WL4COA
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #470,877 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A great pilot, now roll on the series! May 20, 2012

By Jay Lee

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

A Brother's Debt is a Firefly style space adventure. I say pilot here as this book begs for a series.

The characters are believable, raw and there is a whole sense of a very well worked out future landscape where life is tough and even the ship itself is barely functioning. Even the writing style reflects this as it's not a light style, but this isn't a light world and as a military man Step has the right balance of hard and soft.

Like Firefly, this is the wild west of the future. Fighting, lawlessness and pretty terrible outcomes for anyone who gets on the wrong side of money lenders. But there is compassion in this story and characters that come together and bond in spite of themselves.

The only reason I'm giving this 4 instead of 5 stars is that I felt it had the potential to go on and become a full epic space opera novel. Therefore it does come across as the pilot for a series rather than the first full episode. But that is no bad thing. The point of a pilot is to test the water to see if a series has the potential to run and Step Valkin and his crew have bags of potential. Definitely worth the read and hopefully just the start in a long saga.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The first Step in a great series. Highly recommended. July 16, 2012

By J Bryden Lloyd

Format:Kindle Edition

Book Review: A Brother's Debt by Karl Jones
Reviewed by J Bryden Lloyd

Writing Style - 4.0/5.0 (Very Good)
This is a generally well-structured, nicely flowing work. Easy to read and with nicely considered dialogue and balanced descriptive throughout.
The action scenes are a little brief from time-to-time, but considering this is not a full novel, they are good enough and complete enough to work well.

Character Development - 4.0/5.0 (Very Good)
The introductions of the key characters are spread throughout the story, which is nice and far more realistic than having everyone conveniently in a single place at a single time. For the three main "goodies" in the tale, I felt that Step developed very well, and that Jay - portrayed as more of a skilled man hanging on out of boredom - was built as the roguish character the story needed.
Although late coming to the story, it is clear that Zi is going to become a bit of a handful in future parts of the series, but for this instalment, she was pretty much typecast as a pouty, angry teen. This was nicely achieved and although it might have been nicer to see her playing up to that role, it wasn't necessary.
For the various bad guys, I found all were very believable and worked well within the story. It will be interesting to see how these characters grow within the series.

Descriptive - 3.5/5.0 (Good)
Although there was a fair bit of descriptive, it was occasionally on the light side after the initial good start at Hanratty, though equally, once the plot settled again later in the book, there were more positives again. Between these, some things seemed to remain reasonably `up-for-grabs' when it came to details.
Generally however, there was nothing too adverse in the descriptive structure. It flowed well and was nicely presented within the story.

Language & Grammar - 4.5/5.0 (Excellent)
Very good use of language and grammar made this a nice read. It flowed well and everything tied together nicely.
The delivery of the dialogue was very good, especially as the story began to run and the characters began to gel together.

Plot - 4.5/5.0 (Excellent) - MINOR SPOILERS
The intro to the main plot is nicely built and takes you, albeit very briefly, into the gangster-controlled underworld on board a space station. Just as you think you have a handle on who is who, you have a dead character and his unwilling replacement is already on the scene.
From there, I have to say, the author presents a very realistic and carefully considered plot structure, where an old, unmaintained ship plays centre stage for the two main characters.
I found the lack of familiarity, and the fact that they did not get instantly to grips with every system on the vessel, very refreshing.
This was entirely believable and nicely conceived plot, with an equally clever sub-plot that brought in a very much unwanted third character.
Only the further parts will determine whether this mix will work, but this was an excellent start.

General - 4.0/5.0 (Very Good)
Okay, yes, there were a couple of things I thought were light in the descriptive, but to be honest, it all comes down to personal preference and I was looking for more.
It would be easily possible to make this into a much larger book and - at the same time - further improve every element of the writing and the story, but what this is makes perfect sense and it is a very good read.
The next parts will determine whether this will be a great series, but this is a very strong and very good beginning.

4 Stars. Very, very good and highly recommended.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Could have been better. September 4, 2012

By GS

Format:Kindle Edition

We have the main character, a soldier who apparently has a career with the Navy. He relieves himself in the facilities (apparently the term bathroom does not exist in this novella's world.) He is a soldier so I kind of think he would be expected back at his post. "Selling himself into slavery" because of the debt he has inherited from his brother seems to make no sense to me. Especially not when he ponders about the fact that he doesn't have any options other than that. I mean, he's a soldier, and not even from that sector - to which it takes a week to travel to - why not just say frak that and leave? Doesn't make any sense to me.

I don't know, this story was a quick read but I didn't really like it. Overly long sentences that rambled along, too fast paced at times with no real effort to flesh out the characters or the world they live in. It didn't make me care for any of them.

When it actually offered descriptions those consisted of rather random and uninteresting details that didn't do anything for the story, the characters or the world-building.

"Ignoring everything before him, most of which he'd seen outside, Step looked around for the person he was supposed to meet. Since he had no idea who would be meeting him or what they looked like, his visual search was largely a waste. Fortunately, Crezia had either described him, or shown an image of him, to the person she sent to meet him."

This is just an example of the writing. So Step is supposed to meet with this gangster boss in a casino and it is really fortunate that the bad guy's lackeys know what he looks like because that way he won't miss meeting them. I mean, really, he would have probably just gone home if no one had come to escort him to the gangster boss. I am of this rather old-fashioned breed that believes casinos have cameras all over the place, with the bad guy or one of his thugs sitting there pointing at the monitor and contacting some other guy on radio saying "that dude in the black jacket by the entrance, get him." But that might be just me.

Chapter 10 is short and we jump from some security guy who meets him in the lobby of the casino right to some ship that the protagonist is flying, skipping the whole part about talking to the gangster boss entirely. Way to rush a story a long.

It gets weird a bit later in the story when Step is joined by Jay and a 12 year old girl named Zi who explains she'd rather see Step naked than Jay. Yup, exactly the conversation I expect from a 12 year old girl.

Overall I feel rather blah about this novella. It's there, I read it, I will most likely forget about it.

More About the Author

Although he's travelled the world, and seen much of life, Jones prefers to be sat in the quiet of his home with his laptop, writing.
His fictions are set in places which mirror his homeland, and much of his inspiration is drawn from his surroundings. Karl draws on his teen years in Bournemouth, with its quiet village-like suburbs, and bustling town centre, and he uses these settings to bring his books to life.
His thrillers stem from the darkest depths of his mind, however, his tales of space stretch further than your imagination can take you, and you find yourself spiralling out of control into the imaginary universes he creates as you turn the pages faster than warp-speed in order to delve further into his story.
With a bibliography which spans many genres, including amongst them thrillers and romances as well as tales of the paranormal, you're never going to be short on choice for reading material, because never sleeping, Karl writes from dusk 'til dawn, and occasionally even through 'til morn' to bring his eager readers the latest instalments from his sought-after, bestselling stories.