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Drone Ensign: A Hard Sci-fi LitRPG Space Opera (Drone Rising Book 1) Kindle Edition

4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 833 ratings

Raised from the least of humanity to its elite, Benning Kidd must carve out a place for herself in humanity's distant future - no matter what stands in her way.

Humanity has moved far beyond the cradle of Earth, into the stars themselves. In the Collective, energy is limitless, travel and communication are nearly instantaneous, and every person's basic needs are fully met. Citizens are free to choose the lives they wish to lead, and the omnipresent Overnet tracks their strength, power, and accomplishments. Even death has been vanquished, and Citizens are effectively immortal, reborn anew after each death.

Benning Kidd is a Drone, the lowest class of humanity. She exists without memory, purpose, or more than the most basic awareness of herself and the world around her. An accident changes all that, and Benning becomes a Citizen of the Collective, the first Drone to do so in history. She is uniquely talented and unscrupulously driven, choosing a path of battle and glory that will take her from arena to arena and out among the stars themselves.

Benning's existence, though, is a threat to those in power, and forces move against her from the moment she steps out of the respawn chamber. As a starship officer, she's sworn to serve her new captain, but he might not be serving her in turn. She faces threats from without and within, and the only person she can trust is her personal AI, who guides her through the Collective.

Her only chance of survival is to be stronger, smarter, and more cunning than those who stand in her way. Her path is unique, and only she can forge it. She is the Drone Ensign, warrior and starship officer, and none will stop her from fulfilling her desires!

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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09B4LSMTR
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ (August 6, 2021)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 6, 2021
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2507 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 546 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1737709406
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 833 ratings

About the author

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Kyle Johnson
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Kyle Johnson is a kids gymnastics and martial arts instructor who teaches outside of Chicago. He's worked on cruise ships, traveled the world, climbed glaciers, ziplined between mountains, and even danced in the end of a rainbow.

Currently, his main hobbies include helping his wife raise their two kids, because after that, who's got time for hobbies?

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
833 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book enjoyable and engaging. They appreciate the rich storyline with an interesting premise. The characters are well-developed, including a strong female lead. Readers praise the writing quality as superb and the world-building as amazing. They also mention that the pacing is good to great, with rules not broken meaninglessly.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

37 customers mention "Readability"37 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging with its exploration and action. They find it refreshing to read a sci-fi litRPG that keeps them interested throughout. While some mention spelling issues, overall they praise the book as a good read with a fun premise.

"...interesting with it while thankfully keeping the hard science fiction approachable to the masses...." Read more

"It's a good book. Well written no profanity. Has a very unique system. Great sifi...." Read more

"...All in all, a great science fiction series." Read more

"More entertaining than i expected . A good start to a captivating series so I got the next one immediately" Read more

21 customers mention "Story quality"21 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the engaging storyline and premise. They praise the good plotting, believable characters, and solid game mechanics. The SciFi setting is a nice change of pace and the unique system makes it an interesting read.

"It's a good book. Well written no profanity. Has a very unique system. Great sifi...." Read more

"...Things make sense and are cohesive, rules aren't broken meaninglessly. All in all, a great science fiction series." Read more

"...terminology but I say that because I want you to know that the story is so good that I could go elsewhere in easily fit that’s how well written it is..." Read more

"...Its not easy because the story is actually largely fun, and the characters are not common tropes that you find in so many stories...." Read more

11 customers mention "Character design"8 positive3 negative

Customers enjoy the character design. They find the main characters engaging and like the strong female lead.

"...The book has many adult situations And the main character is an anti hero. That's not usually the type of book I like but it kept me interested...." Read more

"Well written, strong characters and good plot. Kyle Johnson has a strong writing skill and good plotting...." Read more

"A very good read and an interesting main character. I look forward to book (2). Never thought I would find a sociopath so fascinating!" Read more

"...them, and this story just emphasized that aspect of the character design too often. Benning Kidd is not a hero. She's not a good main character...." Read more

9 customers mention "Writing quality"7 positive2 negative

Customers like the writing quality. They mention the book has good writing without grammatical errors. The author did a decent job of writing a story, but they felt the main character was lacking.

"It's a good book. Well written no profanity. Has a very unique system. Great sifi...." Read more

"...Don’t ask me why that’s a spoiler. Anyway superb writing I didn’t find any grammatical errors well one there was one point where a paragraph cut..." Read more

"The author did a good job of writing a decent story but failed to give the main character any redeeming qualities...." Read more

"...Kyle Johnson has a strong writing skill and good plotting. I look forward to reading the rest of this series." Read more

6 customers mention "World building"6 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the imaginative world-building. They find the future societies and technologies interesting. The world setup and mechanics are also appreciated.

"...The world building is amazing and the imagination it took to think it up is way beyond me. All of that and it is still litrpg...." Read more

"This was a great storry! I find the society interesting, and how Benning Kidd fits into it was a fun ride...." Read more

"And unique take on various topics of science fiction, future societies, future technologies, and litRPG...." Read more

"Interesting LitRPG! I really like world setup and mechanics." Read more

4 customers mention "Pacing"4 positive0 negative

Customers like the pacing and world-building. They mention that things make sense and are cohesive, with rules not broken meaninglessly. The book has good philosophical exploration and a smart, practical main character without fatal flaws. While some readers did not like the sociopath-like MC, they found the book long with lots of detail.

"...Things make sense and are cohesive, rules aren't broken meaninglessly. All in all, a great science fiction series." Read more

"Nice long book. Lots of detail to everything. I did not like the sociopath like MC. She was kind of a massive B word. Honestly everyone sucked...." Read more

"...A smart ruthless (or practical) MC without the fatal flaws that so many authors put in simply to push the story along...." Read more

"Decent world building and some good basic philosophical exploration make this worth reading...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2024
    The "Drone Ensign" is my final read of 2024 and out of the nearly two hundred books I've somehow managed to read this year, it is definitely sitting in the top five.

    From the speech patterns that echoed of "Demolition Man", to the division of the solar system that twinged on memories of "The Expanse", this book hit a lot of weird notes in the back of my mind. Kudos to the author for taking the LitRPG trope of 'gamification' and doing something truly interesting with it while thankfully keeping the hard science fiction approachable to the masses. My only gripe is towards the confusing linguistic bastardization of the metric system. If you think it's bad reading it visually, the assistive reader somehow made it worse.

    Anywho, I'm looking forward to binging the rest of the series and then taking a crack at whatever else the author has.
  • Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2021
    It's a good book. Well written no profanity. Has a very unique system. Great sifi.

    The book has many adult situations And the main character is an anti hero. That's not usually the type of book I like but it kept me interested. Usually I like books where the hero is a real hero for the right reasons even if they have flaws. Who knows though. Maybe the main character will become a hero in time.

    I'm looking forward to the next book
    One person found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2022
    If you're looking for a hero, someone who does good and helps others out of the goodness of their heart, you've come to the wrong book.
    Someone else complained about how the main character is basically a sociopath. I actually really liked that and how the main character understood that something seems different about her and does have some introspection about it at times.
    Another thing I loved was the naval combat. In space, at the speeds the ships are traveling, you're not shooting at where the ship is, because by the time you see it, it's been a couple seconds and even lasers of different wavelengths will take a couple seconds to get there, so aiming at where you see the ship is a guaranteed miss. Most laser/beam weaponry fires in spreads to cover a probability cone based on previous heading and speed, most missile weapons are more like airburst (spaceburst?) munitions, to disrupt systems with the energy from the payload.
    In terms of realism, I love that this series doesn't hand wave too much. A couple of the basic building blocks are slightly hand wave-y, but the main character doesn't have the education to understand it either, so why should the reader? Things make sense and are cohesive, rules aren't broken meaninglessly.
    All in all, a great science fiction series.
    2 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2021
    Have you ever sat down and had one of those meals that was really filling and then when you got done took a step away from the table and said to yourself man I want just a little bit more. Next experience I got here.

    Sci-fi fiction LITRPG. Where are used to having someone sucked into a computer system and they literally create a character from a blank slate well this character quite literally begins as a blank slate. There’s more backstory to it than that but I don’t wanna spoil anything. You find out that everything is not black-and-white either things can be gray and the story of growth makes you want to see where she is going and what is going to happen next. No I have to caution you the first few chapters do take time to develop the universe but there is a reason for that you desperately need to understand how this world works and the over arching way the system works. Don’t ask me why that’s a spoiler. Anyway superb writing I didn’t find any grammatical errors well one there was one point where a paragraph cut off and you could tell that there were three or four more words that needed to go there that was it. My only hope is that the author can quickly bring us the next book in the series.

    I always argue with a book in this genre you can tell how good it is if you could actually take it off of its written pages and put it into different archetypes this book could easily be a season of a show on Netflix. This book could easily be turned into a 40 hour 50 hour RPG video game a good one mind you. The universe overall could actually make a good MMORPG. Now I know I’m using a lot of gaming terminology but I say that because I want you to know that the story is so good that I could go elsewhere in easily fit that’s how well written it is. Like I said I’m looking forward to the next book in the series I just hope we don’t have to wait a long time to get it.
    10 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2024
    More entertaining than i expected
    . A good start to a captivating series so
    I got the next one immediately
  • Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2022
    The book itself was excellent, the story was exciting and enthralling, and the writing was pretty good as well. There only a couple of errors and typos, but other than that it was done well.

    Two reasons that it didn't make 5 stars. The first and more concerning to me as a reader is how the book left off at the end. It spent less time wrapping things up and just kinda sped through it. Additionally the epilogue contained political scheming of powerful actors... Honestly it's just such a tired and worn out trope that the people on high actively hunt and hurt the little guys. It may be true, but the premise of that part of the plot is just so... Boring. Plus it wasn't really foreshadowing so much as blatantly stating what the ongoing drama was going to be about, again... Boring. It also kind of hurts the power fantasy the author has going for the MC. The last reason is strictly personal preference... Changing of swear words. In universe, yeah I get it, but as a convenience to the readers? I have mixed feelings about it. One side of it is novel, while the author is just obnoxious.

    All that said, I'm looking forward to the next novel and will be downloading it after this review!
    3 people found this helpful
    Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • Martin
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent take on LitRPG
    Reviewed in Canada on August 26, 2021
    I've read a lot of sci-fi and LitRPG, this is a great example of how to blend the two. Not overwhelmingly RPG or stat driven, but enough to take the story in some interesting directions. It felt well paced and balanced.
  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars I got this book on a whim
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 16, 2021
    And never had a lot of hope from the title but to my surprise it just got better and better so I can only say give it a go it is good
  • Kindle Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars From drone to. . . .
    Reviewed in Australia on November 27, 2021
    Great start, litrpg elements in a sci-fi setting with some seriously cool World building elements. Looking forward to future installments
  • Larry
    4.0 out of 5 stars In My Opinion
    Reviewed in Canada on March 21, 2022
    The background is difficult to grasp, but once the acceptance level gets high enough, the story unfolds excellently. Good story and looking forward to the next one.
  • KYM
    1.0 out of 5 stars Didnt finish
    Reviewed in Germany on January 1, 2023
    I could not make it through the first third of the book. Main character was relatable to until she stopped her personality overwrite through her willpower and subsequently gets her personality reprogrammed through fake memories and becomes a sociopath. Not worth my money. Deleted the book from my kindle.

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