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The Scrolls of Xavier #1
The Scrolls of Xavier
In the year of 2067, a new world is discovered amidst the dark expanses of the universe. Harvesting the resources of this vast planet, known as Xavier997, may be the only hope a post-apocalyptic Earth has for survival. Upon arriving, however, the explorers of this promising new world soon discover that the treacherous and, most shockingly, inhabited realm of Xavier may also lead to mankind’s final undoing.
In order to shed light on the dangerous secrets of this world, Captain Michael Dawn must lead a team of earth’s most skilled soldiers across its globe in search of five mysterious items known as the Scrolls. What seems like a routine mission, however, goes terribly wrong as Dawn and his team quickly realize that Xavier does not give up her treasures without a fight. To find the Scrolls, Captain Dawn must risk everything, including his love, his career, and his life.
Without the Scrolls, mankind's final hope is lost. With them, it might be even worse.
In order to shed light on the dangerous secrets of this world, Captain Michael Dawn must lead a team of earth’s most skilled soldiers across its globe in search of five mysterious items known as the Scrolls. What seems like a routine mission, however, goes terribly wrong as Dawn and his team quickly realize that Xavier does not give up her treasures without a fight. To find the Scrolls, Captain Dawn must risk everything, including his love, his career, and his life.
Without the Scrolls, mankind's final hope is lost. With them, it might be even worse.
- GenresScience Fiction
285 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 11, 2011
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289 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
April 24, 2013
I was given a free copy of the audiobook version of this book by Mr. Ashley.
I want to frame this review by saying that this was a very commendable first effort, and that I think that this book would be better suited for someone in middle school or early high school (about the same as Mr. Ashley, so that makes sense). I don't normally write long reviews, so bear with me.
The Scrolls Of Xavier is set in a future where Earth is plagued with three super bodies in constant war over the few resources left. Humanity's only hope is to travel to a distant planet populated by many hostile alien tribes and try to find a way to carve out a place for themselves. Captain Michael Dawn is tasked with leading a team to find 5 objects of interest, named "the scrolls," among the indigenous tribes of the planet.
Let's start with the good points in the book. I won't write of most of them as to avoid spoilers, but I did enjoy the aspects closer to the end of the book. The way Ashley left it open to continue the story was smart.
And next, I'll talk about the main character, Michael Dawn. Now, this character confounds me. I can't peg him. At times he seems like a military man, and at others he seems like he is a terrible soldier. Whether he was written this way intentionally or not, I am not sure. If so, he would be the most interesting thing in the book. Dawn is not an experienced leader, but he seems to never have much in the way of a plan at all. Especially not a plan with the ladies.
Which brings me to the romance of the story between the captain and the only woman of the squad, the red headed, dual firearm wielding, exCIA agent Collins. Here is what I interpret her to look like:
Yes, I'm saying he essentially described Black Widow.
The dialogue between the two is often very cheesy and forced, but the thing that confused me the most was their first encounter. In this world relations between two soldiers of the opposite sex can result in being court-martialed, but the very first bit of dialogue between the two comes straight out of a sexual harassment video when Dawn asks a variant of the line, "What's a pretty thing like yourself doing in a place like this?" This was one of the times where I really questioned the kind of man that Captain Dawn was being portrayed as.
The rest of the squad is comprised of elite soldiers spanning from each of the three super powers(which raises the question how can they work together on this mission while still killing each other back on Earth?) The main issue with the squad is that many of them don't have personalities. Only three of them really matter, Dawn, Collins, and the British soldier Roberts. The others are ignored and left as blank canvasses. This makes Roberts the second most developed character, and he is pretty interesting. He is meant to be endearing because he is always cheerful, but he could sometimes be annoying (i.e. his endless use of "chap." I get it. He's British.)
Enough of the squad. Now I'm going to talk about larger aspects in the writing.
One thing I wanted more of was for Ashley to paint me a picture so I could see the world that he saw. I wanted to be able to craft images of the people, the places, the entire alien world, but I never got much in the way of description. The world could have easily been the most interesting thing about the story, but it is neglected and only described about a quarter of the way through as "earth-like" instantly dulling it in my imagination. The inhabitants of the world also take a back seat. The members of the hostile tribes get described well, but the other animals and fauna are not. Maybe this leaves more of the world to be explored later in the series, but in this one it just felt like a let down.
On to the story. The story was good. Definitely has similarities to Avatar. My problem here was the ways the scrolls were retrieved because they were so similar to one another. The format was get flown to location, find most defended location, start a fight with the tribe, fight into their base, find the leader, Dawn comes inches from death only to be saved, leave base, planes come before the tribe converges on the squad with minor variations in one of the steps for a couple of the retrievals.
More on the missions: I think it would have been easy and added a lot to the story to add more personality to the squad during these missions. I think there were a lot of opportunities for interesting interactions that were ignored. After a few instances of Dawn showing his inability as a leader the green beret Smith takes charge and starts delegating tasks. I was kind of hoping that this would lead to some form of conflict between Smith and Dawn where Smith starts to resent that Dawn was placed as the leader, but instead Smith apologizes and advices Dawn later on. There was also a point where Dawn, O'Brien, and Roberts are separated from the rest of the squad. Before this it is revealed that O'Brien is former IRA. I was hoping to see this develop into a conflict with the English Roberts, but other than as background, this aspect of O'Brien's past are never brought up again making it feel like it was simply an attempt to make O'Brien interesting without much work.
As a work of science fiction, there is a lot of leeway as to what can be imagined and added to the story, but a lot of the times it either became a plot hole, way too convenient, or just plain silly, but Ashley was smart about creating something that helped avoid plot holes and easy answers with the triangle UFO and what it did to the humans. One example of something I found silly that I'm thinking of is when Collin's is getting ready to sneak into a stronghold. She dons her stealthy attire which is comprised with the ultimate in stealthy tech...
A ski mask!
Wait... a ski mask? Really? No invisibility cloak or something? This is in the same future where we travelled 3 light years away, right? Because such technology is available today.
Another time was one that I explained earlier when Dawn, Roberts, and O'Brien got separated. The way that the group got back together was one that I couldn't just accept.
Okay, my review is coming to an end. I hope that the things I've mentioned are not viewed as harsh, but instead things to work on. I am not an acclaimed literary critic, so there is the distinct possibility that I don't know what I'm talking about. In the end, I stand by that this book would probably be best enjoyed by a middle or high schooler, and that is in no way an insult. I hope to see Jon Ashley continue to grow as an author.
I want to frame this review by saying that this was a very commendable first effort, and that I think that this book would be better suited for someone in middle school or early high school (about the same as Mr. Ashley, so that makes sense). I don't normally write long reviews, so bear with me.
The Scrolls Of Xavier is set in a future where Earth is plagued with three super bodies in constant war over the few resources left. Humanity's only hope is to travel to a distant planet populated by many hostile alien tribes and try to find a way to carve out a place for themselves. Captain Michael Dawn is tasked with leading a team to find 5 objects of interest, named "the scrolls," among the indigenous tribes of the planet.
Let's start with the good points in the book. I won't write of most of them as to avoid spoilers, but I did enjoy the aspects closer to the end of the book. The way Ashley left it open to continue the story was smart.
And next, I'll talk about the main character, Michael Dawn. Now, this character confounds me. I can't peg him. At times he seems like a military man, and at others he seems like he is a terrible soldier. Whether he was written this way intentionally or not, I am not sure. If so, he would be the most interesting thing in the book. Dawn is not an experienced leader, but he seems to never have much in the way of a plan at all. Especially not a plan with the ladies.
Which brings me to the romance of the story between the captain and the only woman of the squad, the red headed, dual firearm wielding, exCIA agent Collins. Here is what I interpret her to look like:
Yes, I'm saying he essentially described Black Widow.
The dialogue between the two is often very cheesy and forced, but the thing that confused me the most was their first encounter. In this world relations between two soldiers of the opposite sex can result in being court-martialed, but the very first bit of dialogue between the two comes straight out of a sexual harassment video when Dawn asks a variant of the line, "What's a pretty thing like yourself doing in a place like this?" This was one of the times where I really questioned the kind of man that Captain Dawn was being portrayed as.
The rest of the squad is comprised of elite soldiers spanning from each of the three super powers(which raises the question how can they work together on this mission while still killing each other back on Earth?) The main issue with the squad is that many of them don't have personalities. Only three of them really matter, Dawn, Collins, and the British soldier Roberts. The others are ignored and left as blank canvasses. This makes Roberts the second most developed character, and he is pretty interesting. He is meant to be endearing because he is always cheerful, but he could sometimes be annoying (i.e. his endless use of "chap." I get it. He's British.)
Enough of the squad. Now I'm going to talk about larger aspects in the writing.
One thing I wanted more of was for Ashley to paint me a picture so I could see the world that he saw. I wanted to be able to craft images of the people, the places, the entire alien world, but I never got much in the way of description. The world could have easily been the most interesting thing about the story, but it is neglected and only described about a quarter of the way through as "earth-like" instantly dulling it in my imagination. The inhabitants of the world also take a back seat. The members of the hostile tribes get described well, but the other animals and fauna are not. Maybe this leaves more of the world to be explored later in the series, but in this one it just felt like a let down.
On to the story. The story was good. Definitely has similarities to Avatar. My problem here was the ways the scrolls were retrieved because they were so similar to one another. The format was get flown to location, find most defended location, start a fight with the tribe, fight into their base, find the leader, Dawn comes inches from death only to be saved, leave base, planes come before the tribe converges on the squad with minor variations in one of the steps for a couple of the retrievals.
More on the missions: I think it would have been easy and added a lot to the story to add more personality to the squad during these missions. I think there were a lot of opportunities for interesting interactions that were ignored. After a few instances of Dawn showing his inability as a leader the green beret Smith takes charge and starts delegating tasks. I was kind of hoping that this would lead to some form of conflict between Smith and Dawn where Smith starts to resent that Dawn was placed as the leader, but instead Smith apologizes and advices Dawn later on. There was also a point where Dawn, O'Brien, and Roberts are separated from the rest of the squad. Before this it is revealed that O'Brien is former IRA. I was hoping to see this develop into a conflict with the English Roberts, but other than as background, this aspect of O'Brien's past are never brought up again making it feel like it was simply an attempt to make O'Brien interesting without much work.
As a work of science fiction, there is a lot of leeway as to what can be imagined and added to the story, but a lot of the times it either became a plot hole, way too convenient, or just plain silly, but Ashley was smart about creating something that helped avoid plot holes and easy answers with the triangle UFO and what it did to the humans. One example of something I found silly that I'm thinking of is when Collin's is getting ready to sneak into a stronghold. She dons her stealthy attire which is comprised with the ultimate in stealthy tech...
A ski mask!
Wait... a ski mask? Really? No invisibility cloak or something? This is in the same future where we travelled 3 light years away, right? Because such technology is available today.
Another time was one that I explained earlier when Dawn, Roberts, and O'Brien got separated. The way that the group got back together was one that I couldn't just accept.
Okay, my review is coming to an end. I hope that the things I've mentioned are not viewed as harsh, but instead things to work on. I am not an acclaimed literary critic, so there is the distinct possibility that I don't know what I'm talking about. In the end, I stand by that this book would probably be best enjoyed by a middle or high schooler, and that is in no way an insult. I hope to see Jon Ashley continue to grow as an author.
July 3, 2013
The Scrolls of Xavier by John A Ashley is an awesome science fiction story, and, it's part of a series. The planet Xavier is unique in that it has air, climate and geography similar to earth, though it does have 2 moons. Captain Michael Dawn is chosen to lead a secret mission to retrieve scrolls from the hostile tribes bent on destroying the earthlings. The first tribe is the scorpions, next the brutes, then the marsh and lastly the wolf tribe in the artic regions. They discover a higher authority that controls the tribes. On top of all that, the war raging on earth seems to have followed them to Xavier. The writing is fine and the character depictions are excellent. This was a good scifi read.
March 23, 2013
Messy, in-progress review:
I'm having trouble finishing this one, I've enjoyed what I've heard so far, but the narration is just too much. The author's age and inexperience do show through the writing, but it's a commendable first effort. I was accomplishing almost nothing at age 17, so he should certainly be recognized for his work.
As fellow reviewer Philip Blake hilariously (and hilariously accurate) put it, it was as if the narrator was doing a "Christian Bale as Batman" impersonation every time he spoke out loud as the main character. I've been unable to listen without laughing.
Finally giving up on this one. I keep pushing it to the back burner and realized today that I could care less what happens to the characters. I wish Mr. Ashley much luck in the future, I'm sure he will improve over time.
I'm having trouble finishing this one, I've enjoyed what I've heard so far, but the narration is just too much. The author's age and inexperience do show through the writing, but it's a commendable first effort. I was accomplishing almost nothing at age 17, so he should certainly be recognized for his work.
As fellow reviewer Philip Blake hilariously (and hilariously accurate) put it, it was as if the narrator was doing a "Christian Bale as Batman" impersonation every time he spoke out loud as the main character. I've been unable to listen without laughing.
Finally giving up on this one. I keep pushing it to the back burner and realized today that I could care less what happens to the characters. I wish Mr. Ashley much luck in the future, I'm sure he will improve over time.
July 29, 2013
Awesome book. This book is sci-fi, military, action adventure all rolled up into one. An excellent read. I definitely recommend this book to action junkies.
January 28, 2017
Lots of action
This was a well written novel with lots of nonstop action on another planet that humans want to colonize yet is populated with deadly indigenous species. Will definitely read the sequel.
This was a well written novel with lots of nonstop action on another planet that humans want to colonize yet is populated with deadly indigenous species. Will definitely read the sequel.
July 20, 2018
Good storyline, lots of detail
A reasonably good read. Lots of military action. But same action in different environments. More like vignettes strung together with the same characters than a consistent storyline. Worth a read but I won’t be buying any of the following books.
A reasonably good read. Lots of military action. But same action in different environments. More like vignettes strung together with the same characters than a consistent storyline. Worth a read but I won’t be buying any of the following books.
July 1, 2020
Nope
If you can't say anything nice,don't say anything at all... So I can only repeat... If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
If you can't say anything nice,don't say anything at all... So I can only repeat... If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
November 6, 2022
Uncover the mysterious
This is a book with many turns and twists. That answers questions you didn’t know you had. It was an enjoyable read.
This is a book with many turns and twists. That answers questions you didn’t know you had. It was an enjoyable read.
June 2, 2013
Set in 2067, Captain Michael Dawn has been assigned an international troop for his next assignment. The next assignment is a deadly, top-secret mission, he and his team must scour the planet Xavier for the five ancient scrolls. Each of the scrolls are hidden deep in the territories that belong to five of the deadliest tribes in Xavier. As if this wasn’t enough for Captain Dawn to handle, one of his team members is the very attractive, Ashley Collins and he must decide whether he will risk his career in order to pursue a relationship with agent Collins.
From the start of the Prologue, this story entwines the reader in a fast-paced adventure. The Scrolls of Xavier gives readers a taste of what military life would be like on another planet. Though the story is gripping and intriguing, it is a very easy read. The ease of the writing makes it appear as a young adult book, but the graphic details and brutal scenes call for a more mature audience. There were a few diction errors, but they did not detract from the storyline.
Notes:
A copy of this book was provided by the author for me to review.
This review was originally posted on Ariesgrl Book Reviews.
From the start of the Prologue, this story entwines the reader in a fast-paced adventure. The Scrolls of Xavier gives readers a taste of what military life would be like on another planet. Though the story is gripping and intriguing, it is a very easy read. The ease of the writing makes it appear as a young adult book, but the graphic details and brutal scenes call for a more mature audience. There were a few diction errors, but they did not detract from the storyline.
Notes:
A copy of this book was provided by the author for me to review.
This review was originally posted on Ariesgrl Book Reviews.
May 29, 2015
The Scrolls of Xavier was a decent book. Action sequences were good. Character development okay. A decent amount of technology throughout. Without giving too much away, I was disappointed a bit in the ending. The challenges faced throughout the book should have been minor compared to the ones faced at the end. But that wasn't the case.
September 17, 2013
I really liked this book. Haven't read any SciFi in awhile and this was a good read since it involved soldiers, multiple alien species and an almost impossible task they had to complete. I'm sure the other two books in this series will be just a good as this one. I'd recommend this to anyone.
September 17, 2013
Needed more character development. The main character falls in love wirh the only female member of the team and feels another member us his best friend of all time but we never get to see the relationships develop. Otherwise, good story.
April 28, 2015
Pretty entertaining
A nice little story. Very fast paced. Almost to fAst to be believable. I like the characters and the plot line. He definitely isn't afraid to kill off a few characters. I would recommend this book.
A nice little story. Very fast paced. Almost to fAst to be believable. I like the characters and the plot line. He definitely isn't afraid to kill off a few characters. I would recommend this book.
October 29, 2015
Great book easy to read. For the 1st book since I joined I was pleased with this book//$$$!!!!
It takes a lot to get me involved. This was one of the first book I have read on here and plan on many more
It takes a lot to get me involved. This was one of the first book I have read on here and plan on many more
October 19, 2015
Good book
It starts slow but it picks up as the story progresses. Some of the science is not to accurate the story makes up for the lack of science facts or closeness. I still liked the story.
It starts slow but it picks up as the story progresses. Some of the science is not to accurate the story makes up for the lack of science facts or closeness. I still liked the story.
November 8, 2013
Despite the typographical errors this book held my attention from start to finish. The author was very good at describing the alien characters.
July 24, 2015
An alright book that surprised me. Steady plot and overall goodness, but nothing to amazing. Good way to past time.
September 6, 2016
I had high hopes but several things got under my skin that I couldn't let go of to truly buy into the book. Good imagination on the author, just eh not my cup of tea.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews