A hope for humanity it broke my heart to leave.

Ericson is a genius possessed of unblinking cajones. To tackle a subject of this scope in a far less subtle way than he did in the Fall of the Malazan Empire books takes wit, imagination and perspicacity, not to mention honesty. Everyone should be required to read this and perhaps enough seeds would be sewn….

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A little bit preachy but it's my kind of preachy

A little bit preachy but it's my kind of preachy so I loved it.the narrator was great too.hope he writes another novel in the series,the ending was a bit abrupt.

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3 people found this helpful

Dull and religiously based

If you like your SF to be based on religious values and get talked at in big chunks by a narrator struggling with male voices then look no further

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1 person found this helpful

Start of a great trilogy???

Much anticipated, which usually garners disaster. Not this time! Up to the usual high standards.

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Good concepts and interesting story

Pace was a bit slow I felt but the story was really interesting. It was a tad preachy.
I agree with others that the narrator seemed to have difficulty with male voices: every male just seemed "wacky" which was a bit distracting.

Overall, the concept was strong enough to keep me going. The book was good enough as a standalone or part of a bigger series.

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Had potential but left disappointed.

Story had potential, but the many accents from the narrator proved REALLY distracting. Also, I know the US President is written as being a bit dim witted, but seriously the accents and shouting really got under my skin. Most male characters in this were dumbed down and made sound like degenerates or rednecks. This was mostly the narrators take on their characters I would say, but I may be proven wrong. In any case I was disappointed to say the least, especially as Audible recommended this book.

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1 person found this helpful

Really badly narrated

I've blamed bad narration in more than one review, but this was terrible. The lady was good at narrating female characters, but she tried (and failed) to portray every single male character as either incredibly gruff, or unbearably squeaky, neither of which she could pull off. The result was honestly like listening to a podcast of the Muppets show - even the AI presence, a pinwheel of the plot, was slapstick comedy, which did not fit at all well into the story. Think of a mother reading Goldilocks and the Three Bears to an excited two-year-old. I thought I'd get used to it, but it distracted me from the storyline until the very end. Is this how women mistakenly view men? The narrating of male characters was strongly reminiscent of the writing of male characters in The Virgin Suicides - like someone who has never had a conversation with a male in which they've actually paid any attention, and has no idea what a male is, 'but has, like, totally heard of them in magazines' and believes she has it nailed. It was so bad it was almost sexist (and if read by a male with this drastic slant on the opposite sex, probably would be).

Maybe she was given direction by someone who thought this was a custard-pie comedy.

Story was just okay, great foundation with a strong female lead, but long periods of no actual story, and instead people discussing the socio-philosophical consequences of an alien presence on dinner-table conversations thereafter, which got aaaaagonisingly dull at times.

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Wish I hadn’t bought this

When the narrator does some of the men’s voices, she sounds like Bart Simpson and or Ash Ketchum. It’s hilarious. And the American President is crazy with his big baby temper tantrums. The woman who gets abducted makes inane arguments in favour of violence at the beginning of every chapter while chain smoking, then capitulating to the AI’s organised argument as though it were her idea the whole time. I only made it to chapter 12 before I had to call it quits. Nothing happens really, just a bunch of talking about basically random high school science project topics.

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