Good concepts, poor character development

Nice ideas but difficult to follow in places. The human story is disappointingly weak. Performance was very good once you get used to his unusual pauses.

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Well written/acted aliens

Voice acting is slow at times, but with aliens its very entertaining, best in the book i thonk.

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Crab monsters and AI

first book by this author and it was not bad at all. mix of hard sci-fi and space battles. this is a short book and a sort of prequel from what I understand. will give the rest a try

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Great story -super slow and boring narration

Great hard sci-fi but I kept checking to see if the speed was set to 75%. The slow boring narration detracts from the pace and excitement of the story. Becomes much better if listen to at 125% speed

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A good book, but the narration could have been better

The story is pretty good as this kind of fiction goes. It jumps around a bit and does not focus overly on one character as the main protagonist.
Depending on the author, this can be either good or atrocious. Thankfully this book sits firmly in the good section (at least, in my opinion).

Ric Jerrom however is a different kettle of fish.
I have never come across this narrator before.
He has a good range of 'voices,' the implementation of those to the characters drove me nuts after about an hour.
He also has a habit of talking one moment as if he is telling a fairy tale as a bedtime story, and the next is going over-the-top on some of the Prador voices.
He is clearly having a whale of a time with this reading, and that helps negate some of the more irritating aspects of the telling.
I think he gave it his best, but perhaps a bit less of the Jackanory and overacting might have made for a more enjoyable experience.

As I said, the book itself is good fayre , but there are quite a few illogical happenings scattered here and there, but nothing too egregious.

All in all a good book let down by a bit of over-enthusiastic telling.

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Great stuff!

My favourite Neal Asher story and a good place to start for anyone considering Mr Asher.
Very good performance by the narrator.
Thanks Audible for finally obtaining some more Neil Asher, I look forward to reading them all.

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3 people found this helpful

Enjoyable first contact romp.

Engaging characters. Enjoyable story with a few gruesome descriptions. Echoes of the early Lensman books.

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Gripping!

Another wonderful excursion into the Polity Universe. This was a page turner from start to finish and trust me, you won't be disappointed.

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A nice Polity addition

The story was quite interesting and added more to the story of how the polity prador war started but the narration was (for me) below the standard Im used when listening to Peter Noble narrate the Neal Asher books I’ve purchased, the narrator sounded as if he was attempting to imitate Stephen Fry and not doing so very well at that. I hope that Neal Asher continues to use Peter Noble in future

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2 people found this helpful

My first touch to Polity universe

I started reading the books in chronological order (from goodreads.com) so this was my first touch on the Polity universe even though this seems to be one of the latest books from the writer.
Some mixed feelings here, partly it felt like this book was done to set up a scene, attention was paid to characters that were introduced but never again seen. Luckily partly this book told an interesting tale.
The reader did not quite succeed here, there were no pauses or other indications when point of view changed. This created confusion at the beginning but less so near the 50% mark.
At the moment, I'm not yet sure if I continue reading the Polity books. Probably.

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