The Initial Fold: A first contact space opera adventure (The Fold) Paperback – June 23, 2019

It was not what I expected from the book. It was much better! The core team, along with their new found friends had a great adventure. The pace of the story accelerated as the book unfolded. Very much look forward to another book of continuing adventures.

Good start of a promising series. The scientific advances are a bit over simplified but still handled well in the story. All in all a good read and I will be reading more of this series.

I was unsure about this series when I read the title. It didn't seem very descriptive, and the concept of "folding space" has gotten to be fairly usual in SF writing. Heck, Nathan Lowell's Burleson Drives are machines that "fold space". The Hero Gordon and his wife Star get from world to world by folding space. Meg Murry and her family moved about the Universe via tesseract, which was explained by Mrs. Which as folding space. She even used a fold of her skirt and the image of an ant walking across, ending up a great distance away, once the cloth was straightened. So it's not a new concept.I tried the sample text, and my brow wrinkled when I was first struck by Mr. Adams' brand of what I can only call "goofball humor". It's what I always called "The Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce School Of One-Liners". This is not a bad thing, really. I am a graduate of that school, myself. I just didn't expect it so QUICKLY. But it is NOT by any stretch of the imagination something that detracts from the story. To the contrary, it humanizes the characters a great deal, which is very helpful considering that many of the characters are aliens. Most we meet are alien HUMANS, but still, aliens. Why would an Earthly joke be funny to them? Much of humor is cultural, and it's not always successful between purely Earthly cultures. I, for example simply CAN'T figure out why Firesign Theater is funny at all unless my lifemate is telling me the jokes. Then I can't stop laughing. Or Monty Python's Flying Circus, which I find absolutely hysterical, but my parents couldn't see what all the fuss was about.But the humor WORKS in this context, and it's precisely because the offworlder humans even find it amusing that makes them friendlies in the first place. "Man is the animal that laughs," as the aphorism goes. If they're laughing -- and especially are making YOU laugh -- they MUST, by that definition, be human. Which is a very propitious road of commonality.I'm nearly done with the first book. I picked it up a few weeks ago on my Kindle, because Bookbub showed me back on May 12 that it was on sale. Because of my preconceived notions regarding the title, it sat for those weeks. I started reading it 3 days ago. I'm VERY glad I did start to read it, as I'm enjoying it immensely. So much so, I bought the other five books already. I rarely do that, unless a digital "box set" is available for a promotion. I don't do this often. I mean, I don't buy the rest of a series as individual books all at once like that. It has to be REALLY good for me to go "all in" on a series. The last time I did it was with Jim Butcher's "Codex Alera". I read "The Furies of Calderon", saw the rest of the books were available, and immediately bought the rest of the Kindle books AND Audible narrations, going back to buy the audiobook of the first book too.I love ebooks and audiobooks because my eyes have gotten so old, paper books simply have print too darned small for me to read comfortably anymore. Being able to increase the font size for the ebooks, and simply LISTEN to them as audiobooks, is one of the things that make me glad I'm alive to make use of them.I can't fathom how I could possibly go from enjoying The Initial Fold so much right now to disliking any of the future books, so I bought them. I have no concern that I might be wrong. (I did wonder if the Basche Loftt books have anything to do with the captain of an alien battle cruiser by the same last name, but I don't think it does, more's the pity.)It is not unusual for me to purchase ebooks for a buck, or especially when the "first taste's free". I can afford it (especially the "free" bit), so I do it. This has given rise to what I call my Digital Tsundoku. The word Tsundoku is Japanese, referring to piles of books that one has purchased, but has not yet read, the piles getting distressingly tall, or taking up significant space. The digital version doesn't loom over one's head and threaten to fall, but it DOES tend to grow one's library rather...large-ish. I have 1,868 books and 3,398 audiobooks in my Amazon/Audible libraries. But I also have huge folders of ebooks and audiobooks from places like Project Gutenberg and Librivox, from the Von Mises library, from Humble Bundle book offers, from every source I've managed to find. Heck, I have a pile of mathematical ebooks I found in an online textbook library, and books on drawing and painting from goodness knows how many places.But I not only bought THESE books, I'm reading them and enjoying them. From my experience with them, I think you should buy them, read them, and enjoy them, too.

First contact is one of the staples of Sci-Fi and well done first contact stories are often thought provoking and intriguing. I can think of any number of this type of story that has stayed with me many years, but they all had things that this book lacks - realistic plots and interesting characters.The story here is that a new FTL drive has been developed, and a copy stolen, so two vessels set out to explore. There is great potential here, both for interesting story lines as well as conflict, but this book just fell flat for me. The characters are shallow, much of the humor seemed High School juvenile to me and the plot lines was just not realistic. I try to never give away spoilers so I don't want to say too much, but I finished the book with relief, knowing I would not buy the next book in the series.It is light and easy to read, but don't expect too much from the plot or the characters.

The fall back into 20 century as a cultural backdrop is a bit strange but all up an entertaining story

This was really entertaining with likable characters and an exciting story. Good fun all around and I can’t wait to see what happens in the next book. I have to admit the plot is a bit far fetched, but I was happy to suspend my skepticism and enjoy the ride.

This has a good technical start and soon moves in to a more adventure epic and then off into the heroes save the Galaxy. Good read which I would recommend!

It started out like a decent hard SF story but degenerated into the implausible and absurd, with the dubious addition of tart London dialogue and out-of-context references to 20th century pop. The world building was not convincing. I trust this author will improve in his further books.

A great space adventure with futuristic spaceship technology, funny and engaging characters, and a nice plot buildup that sucked me right in.

Funny, and a great story.If you haven't read this, you should.(8 more words required, Amazon tells me - 8!)

I was so tired of all the dystopian novels that this one came as a breath of fresh air. Though it was a bit of a stretch to imagine all the spacefaring species are humanoids, overall the characters were immensely likeable. Lots of adventures and more to look forward to in the sequels. A good read overall.

Given, maybe I had wrong expectation when purchasing this ebook. I was expecting at least some technological explanation, how the fold-drive was developed. Instead, it was given by some etxra-terrestrial actor, testing was in labs on Earth, the first space-flight(s) were conducted with human crew (as if!) and when later on every problems gets solved by an extra-terrestrial AI which will make Jeannie in the bottle become pail due to all it‘s abilities.However, story-board was ok, writing is solid, again, might be mismanagement of my own expectations after reading the covertext.Jokes are a bit lame sometimes, so overall a 3 star rating.Still, I pre-ordered the next part (due on Nov 3rd) since I‘d like to know how the story develops.

This starts out as, to me, a bit of a spoof on SF, a rollicking, comedic story that just kept on going into different moods, but always exciting. Recommended to everyone who enjoys this style.