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    Voyagers, Book 1: Project Alpha
    Unavailable
    Voyagers, Book 1: Project Alpha
    Unavailable
    Voyagers, Book 1: Project Alpha
    Audiobook5 hours

    Voyagers, Book 1: Project Alpha

    Written by D. J. MacHale

    Narrated by Robbie Daymond

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    #1 New York Times bestseller D. J. MacHale launches this part sci-fi, all action adventure, multiplatform series. 

    Earth is about to go dark. Without a new power source, life as we know it will be toast. A global competition is under way to determine which four kids will join the secret mission that might just save us all. Project Alpha is a contest of physical challenges, mental puzzles, and strategic alliances. The battle is fierce. Who will lead the team? Who will pilot the most complicated space ship ever built? Who will be a friend? An enemy? And how will they survive over a year stuck on a space ship together?

    Once chosen, the Voyagers will journey to the far reaches of space, collecting unique elements and facing unbelievable dangers. The future of our planet is in their hands. Sure, they'll be the best in the world . . . but can they save the world?

    The action is on the page, on your device, and out of this world!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 1, 2015
    ISBN9781101916759
    Unavailable
    Voyagers, Book 1: Project Alpha
    Author

    D. J. MacHale

    D. J. MacHale (""The Scout"") is a bestselling author and is also a director, executive producer, and creator of several popular television series and movies. He lives in Southern California with his family, where they spend a lot of time backpacking, scuba diving, and skiing

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    Reviews for Voyagers, Book 1

    3.5/5

    16 ratings5 reviews

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    • 3/5
      3.5 *This book is everything that I expected it to be. It's a short crazy space oddity where a group of 4 kids are expected to save the earth and the future of the human race. This book is in the vein of 39 Clues where each book is written by a different author, each leaving their own perspective. D. J. MacHale has done a great job setting up the series and getting things underway. I can not wait to see how the series progresses. I am glad it’s only 6 books.
    • 2/5
      I think we both persevered from pleasure in reading aloud together, more or less despite the story. We wanted it to be better than it was, yet weren't quite ready to give up on it. We started the second book (by a different author, and ostensibly better) but when the library eBook couldn't be renewed it was left without complaint.Holes in plotting and circumstances: a special "flight cage" for a dog on a spaceship?! R kept noticing how quickly the novel moved through huge chunks of action, and identified how she'd write it differently. Good for that aspect, at least.I do wonder how much this is representative of MacHale's writing, and how much as a hired gun he simply reflected what the publisher / editor demanded: set up the series, slot in your tale to another tale utterly outside your control (another author hired to write that one), tick off the various boxes on what is required of an opening book. I do not, however, wonder strongly enough to seek out another of MacHale's books and see for myself.
    • 4/5
      Four stars for its intended audience. Three stars as an adult- it felt a bit like the bedtime stories I tell my kids, "And then... And then... And then..." But it was entertaining enough to keep my interest and not annoy me. The online portion was not for me- the code requires referring to a key at the front of the book to discover a color code that you have to use an online key to input characters which then unlock "extras". The one message I bothered decoding was a Top Secret memo that contained details you already know by the end of the book.
      I think I will read these with my kids. Nothing violent, no bad language and nothing inappropriate though there are several scenes of suspenseful action.
    • 1/5
      1* for the audiobook edition as the narration was good; 0.5* for the book itself This review probably contains spoilersLet me preface my comments on this book by saying that I am a reader who has a well-developed ability to suspend disbelief. I can accept (or indeed not even notice) unlikely coincidences and improbabilities while reading if the story is exciting, though they might bother me afterwards if they are too blatant. However, MacHale stretched my disbelief to the breaking point starting with the premise of the whole story & piling on additional unbelievable things as it progressed. I don’t know if MacHale is ignorant, a poor writer or just thought that the pre-teen audience of this would be too naïve to notice the book’s many logical flaws. This is NOT science fiction because there is no science and there are several aspects which are directly contradicted by science!Let’s start with the premise: fossil fuels are about to run out and the world is in a severe energy crisis. A pretty good premise for a science fiction story! But immediately there are some ridiculous assertions upon which the entire plot rests – a) humanity’s very existence is threatened by the approaching loss of electricity (“Earth will die”!) and b) the only way to keep having electricity is to get a power source from an unspecified location in outer space. Perhaps the author is right in assuming that 10-12 year-old readers will have difficulty in conceiving of a world without electricity (despite the thousands of years of history in which man did just that!) but it is a bad premise to state that not just man but the planet itself would somehow be threatened by it. In addition, even kids should be aware that there is already existing technology for creating electricity by solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear power. But we are expected to believe that the U.S. government would spend millions or billions of dollars developing a space craft to retrieve ‘the Source’ from deep outer space rather than develop those technologies. I suppose that is almost more believable than the idea that these kids & everyone else have to go to bed at 9 pm because the power cuts leave them in the dark at that time (hello, ever heard of candles??).But that’s not the most ridiculous part! The method of space travel that has been developed to get ‘the Source’ requires that the astronauts be under the age of 14. For some unspecified reason, anyone even one day older than 14 faces medical problems which could be fatal! And to further insult the reader’s intelligence, the author doesn’t even try to make this absurdity conform in the slightest way to biological knowledge. I could possibly conceive by a wild stretch of imagination that there might be some sort of interaction of the space travel with the astronaut’s biology that would be different after puberty. After all, there are lots of changes in our bodies during puberty. But MacHale doesn’t use puberty as the danger point but the specific age of 14. I guess that is because people reach puberty at different times and he wanted a ‘deadline’ which wasn’t vague. Plus, having a specific age meant he could have 2 male & 2 female characters without the worry about the fact that girls generally reach puberty first.The silliness continues: the protagonist, Dash Conroy, is 12 and a half making him 6 months too old to qualify for this mission (since he would turn 14 while aboard the space ship). But not to worry – the commander has a secret new drug that Dash could take that would stop his cells from aging while on the mission! Does he want to talk it over with his mother? No? Okay then, no need for the U.S. government to get parental consent before giving a child an unknown, untested drug with potentially lethal consequences!Then once they are in outer space, using an unexplained Gamma Drive which presumably takes the ship faster than light speed (since it only takes them 15 days to reach a planet “in deep space” past hundreds of stars), the book dives from improbable to actual impossibility. Even though they are light years away, they have instantaneous radio communications with Earth, not even a 10 second delay. Radiowaves, as with all electromagnetic radiation, travels the speed of light – communication between the ship and Earth would have significant delays if it was even possible.Once we finally are told more about ‘the Source’, my ability to listen without rolling my eyes deserted me. The ingredients needed (I refuse to call them elements as that word already has a specific scientific meaning which does NOT apply to these ingredients) to create this “energy source which can stop the world from going dark” include the tooth of a dinosaur-like creature on this alien planet. Now how in the world did the Source’s inventor discover that without ever having such a tooth to analyze?? What aspect of this tooth is required & how did he know that the tooth had it? And worse, this theory of how the Source is going to work is assumed by all, including whoever funded this harebrained mission, to be so certain that there is no possibility that it might fail! A complete lack of understanding of how inventions, particularly scientific & technological inventions, are created. And just in case there wasn’t enough suspense in the story (what with Dash risking death if he is late or misses one of his daily doses of his miracle drug), we now find that the voyagers will have to construct the Source in order to have enough power to return to Earth. Not to worry, though, as the inventor himself is secretly aboard even though he is over 14!Ranting over. I did enjoy the competition between the 8 12-year-olds to see which 4 would be selected to travel in space.
    • 5/5
      I won this book through Goodreads and agreed to give an honest review. All I can say is I'm going to enter for every YA I can and hope I get the next book! I may become a YA lover. Earth has almost exhausted its energy and the people around the globe are forced to endure no lights from dust to dawn. A global competition is underway to select four twelve year old kids to explore the far reaches of outer space to collect unique elements and face the unknown challenges as they would age more slowly than any adults. but the competition between the kids is fierce as they all want the ten million dollars to help their families and the pride of being chosen. Who will be the leader, who will pilot the complicated space ship, and who is the enemy?