Gunboat

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Coast Guard Captain Jesse Watkins is killed in action. Instead of moving on to the afterlife, Watkins wakes up as something different. He has been installed as the core of a derelict starship and must work to repair his vessel if he wants to find his way home.

Threats to his new existence abound, both in the darkness of space, and lurking aboard the ruined hulk of the ship he now commands. Despite the danger, Captain Watkins has a lifetime of naval service experience to call upon. With the help of his system adjunct, they must rebuild and prepare their vessel for the battles to come.

Captain Watkins must become something more than he was before. He must become a vessel powerful enough to survive the journey home. He must become…a Gunboat.New chapters posted every M-W-F.Book 1 is available now for pre-order on Amazon.

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2025
Author: Dean Henegar

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.3/ 5.0
Followers: 1,231
Views: 108,401

Chapters(71 total)

What readers say about Gunboat

“You like System universe ? Hard science ? Spaceship battles and boarding ? Or even dungeon core stories ? Then take a look and stay for this space faring core stories, you will love it. After the excellent You are Summoned, this new novel will blast you lik…”
yohmmRoyal Road5.0 / 5
“I'm a sucker for a story with good space battles and boarding actions. Add to that a ship continually upgrading and evolving, and I'm in! Things are starting off at a steady pace, which I appreciate, and while the MC and his ship aren't OP yet, you can see…”
Garanax12Royal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(10)

yohmmRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
You like System universe ? Hard science ? Spaceship battles and boarding ? Or even dungeon core stories ?
Then take a look and stay for this space faring core stories, you will love it.
After the excellent You are Summoned, this new novel will blast you like a railgun sabot through your pitiful heart. You have been warned.
Garanax12Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I'm a sucker for a story with good space battles and boarding actions. Add to that a ship continually upgrading and evolving, and I'm in! Things are starting off at a steady pace, which I appreciate, and while the MC and his ship aren't OP yet, you can see they will become a deadly force in the not-too-distant future.
Blending fantasy races into spacefaring factions is an interesting take, and I'm looking forward to seeing how potential allies and enemies line up.
All in all, it's a great story, written at a professional level, and one that I'm looking forward to each new post.
HanskiRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Stumbled on it by chance and loving it. Didn’t even check who the author was which I discovered after the 16th chapter. Which then made sense how well written it is. It has the feeling of a dungeon core build but done completely different to the standard. Love the story so far. At chapter 29 now.
RazielReaverRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
This is a nice rewrite for Delerict. I loved that one. I hope it doesnt end so adbructly like the last one. I know there were mayor forces that made you do that. But hey! This one is going really nice as far as I Have read.
A dungeon core in space. Need a bit of clean up for errors in text but the story so far isnt boring at all. Keep going Dean! :3
SrayanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
So your attitude to this might depend on what kind of fantasy-SF you like.
Its a fun story and could be considered a type of dungeon core story, or at the other extreme it’s a hard SF space navy story with (kind of heavily nerfed) space marines.
So if you read as option one it’s fun and different enough from dungeon core stories to add spice. Although I have read a couple of other “space ship core” stories on this site they are still rare. I am giving it the 5 stars for that genre group.
If you read as a kind of “hard SF” space war it is let down by the poor tactical sense of the MC - let’s just say he is definitely not Honor Harrington even though supposed to be reincarnated navy officer.
The units under command are pretty hopeless but that’s because they are level zero units - presumably better options will be available.
Spoiler and example of what’s a bit hard to swallow for a hard SF space navy fan: The mC - despite having combat knowledge - makes the gross basic error of entering short range combat with vessels whose guns are short range optimised and whose “long range” weapons have no delta V after launch.
So the equivalent of bringing a rifle to fight a guy who has a knife and then coming up to within stabbing range - DUMB.
The correct approach would be to maintain long range, junk to avoid the zero acceleration bolides and use his LR instant hit laser weapons to gradually break his enemy. Instead he charges in and gets fairly wrecked by the short range stuff. Any range between 100 and 1000 miles would been ok but he closes in to “knife range”.
So no points for combat ops there, unfortunately for a hard SF fan like me that command stupidity kind of “broke” the story.
But if you are a different genre reader you probably won’t mind this. Anyway it’s still fun.
Hey, Maybe he was a WW1 commander? Those guys weren’t exactly hot shots…..
TargrothRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I initially found this on my Kindle. I've read the first two books and thoroughly enjoyed them. Giving them five stars on Amazon. I was looking for more and considering the genre I came to Royal road to see you I could get it here thankfully I did. This author has a couple stories I'm really into you are summoned dungeon fall to mention a couple and now gunboat. Keep up the great work your world building characters all just amazing thank you so much for sharing these stories
Imperial_MaddoggRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
I am thoroughly enjoying this novel. I originally started reading it as filler while I waited for chapters to post from other books. However, it rapidly moved up the list to be one of my top ongoing novels. I am riding the ups and downs of, Oh a new chapter, and then aww no more new chapters.
The style put me off a little in the beginning but I believe it was due to the main character waking up as a ship, being confused, and having to learn like a newborn.
The story is great, I thought I might not like it since the main character is a ship, rather than a person with a biological body. However, as I continue to read it has turned out to be fine.
I am looking forward to further character development and the dynamic between the main character and the AI on board the ship.
Teufel.Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
ok i like the story a lot the autors books i do know i like most of them so i know this book is nearly an exact copy of derelict it folows the major story line the details are differnet however like beginning and encounter ho things work are different . why is this being written a second time ? or is it just like super minion and the book bioweapon from a differnt autor where the story truly changes after the beginning? so far still a good book so no complaints
lm_sleeplessRoyal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
An interesting and enjoyable spin on a genre that I am fairly new to. All of the bits and pieces I've seen from fantasy progression and dungeon core fiction well applied to a sci-fi space navy setting. I was uncertain whether I would like this but spent half a day chewing through the chapters available and am eagerly awaiting future chapters.
I can't currently point out any major weak points other than its similarity to other dungeon core fiction. If your just done and over with reading that genre, I suspect this story won't rank high on your reading list. As evidenced by my earlier words, that is not an issue for me.
americansmartiesRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Good book, has a few neat ideas. The interpersonal relationships aren't really the star of the show, mind, and neither are the fights, thought they're alright. The focus is more on resource management and upgrades. Speaking of, they all give percentage increases in effectiveness, which reads as a little odd. They're often wonky numbers too, like 6.71% increased damage and 7.1% lower recycle time on a point defense laser. These are fine but only rarely are the actual things improved brought up or capabilities changed in a positive way aside from "more number = good" There's also effectively xp for battles which is a tiny bit odd.
But it's a good story, maybe a read a few chapters to see if it's for you