Fine, but too YA for my tastes

Normally I would use 3 stars to indicate that I 'liked' book but didn't love it. In this case, my 3 stars means "I didn't like it, but not because it was a bad book, it just wasn't for me". Something I find myself coming up against a lot in fiction from the past decade or so is that so many books feel borderline (or wholly) YA. Halfway through this novel, I even did a little googling to see if it's marketed as YA, finding no indication that it is. Perhaps the issue is that the readers who were young adults at the time I was losing interest in YA fiction are now the adults writing adult fiction. And it's just not for me.

So, yeah, abstractly I could definitely see this book's merits and why so many people like it: in many cases, they probably like it for the same reason I didn't! Things like the cutesy elements such as 'Grippy' the pet maintenance bot, which I thought was lame but I'm sure many readers adored. Or the way Jules kept on referring to Arden as a 'nerd' for being good with technology. In the 36th century. Really? Like I say, all stuff that made it feel like a YA novel.

All the characters were pretty 'meh'. Sanda's interractions with Bero felt, at times, very trite, like a resurrection of the tired 'woman teached robot how to be human' trope. I also didn't get why Bero would be compared to a confused teenager - we all know teenagers are largely the way they are because of hormones, right?

The cornery brother/sister relationship was also far too sickly sweet for me, and as another reviewer mentioned, being determined to stand up for/rescue his sister seemed to be Birion's only personality trait. I actually never got what aptitude he was supposed to have that had elevated him to his current position.

The worldbuilding felt pretty lazy. On a macro level, it was futuristic, but the everyday felt pretty much like the 21st century, with many elements and cultural references that took a huge suspension of disbelief to accept that they would have survived 1500 years. Like, it low-key bugged me that drinks served included bourbon and champagne, both drinks produced in specific locations according to stringent criteria, so it seems kinda unlikely they would be commonplace on far flung worlds that have existed for centuries. (Yeah, I'll admit, I am being nit-picky, but it's the sort of detail I really admire when an author thinks about it, and this author didn't.)

It also annoyed me when Sanda butchered a metaphor and spoke about "putting that Pandora back in the box". And I may have misunderstood, but a couple of times the author seemed to think that a HEPA vacuum is something to do with air conditioning.

I listened to the audiobook, and whilst I think the narrator did a sterling job, there were a couple of unfortunately choices. The first was the choice to have a male narrator in a book where 2 of the 3 POV characters are female. Both Sanda and Jules did, at times, sound to me a little like Paul O'Grady, which was distracting. As I could hardly take Thomas seriously, voiced as he was like Buzz Lightyear.

Just about all these complaints are quite personal to me and won't bother many readers. Indeed, they may be the very thing another readers falls in love with (especially Grippy).

In short, I didn't like it, but you might. Now I'm off to sorbet my brain with some Robert Harris or John Wyndham.

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Excellent

Excellent with lots of twists and turns . Very good concepts - a bit Mcafree Ship who sang baseline.
Narration a bit slow - suggest you listen at 1.1 x speed .
Already bought book 2

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exciting and well performed

interesting with twists and turns, makes you want to read on! will be getting the next book

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pacing issue

there's a good story trapped in too slow a start and no real ending. Shame.

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2 people found this helpful

Realy futurist listen

Love joe Jameson he is so good and this book was very good well done to O’Keefe. Can’t wait for the second book.

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2 people found this helpful

Shoild Emotional AI control super weapons?

Quality Scifi good drama, decent twists suspense and action. Thought provoking. Star Gates vs interstellar speed, power good set ups and depth.
Narration was good but didn't take to his female voices, would have been better with second female voice actor as two main characters are female.

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Thoroughly impressed

The start of a great series, excellently written with believable characters and great action. More Farscape in style than The Expanse, but twists and turns abound beautifully. I loved all of them.

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lack of story

I'm still waiting for a story line at the end. there seems to be some development but I've no idea what.

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Long, mostly engaging story with a lot of twists

This held my attention over 18+ hours of listening.The story is principally Sanda’s but there’s a fair chunk from her brother Biran, and another much smaller chunk from somewhere a long way away that has a lot less input, and at times I forgot where things had been left when the book next returned there. There are also a few brief interludes from another couple of people who get a few short bits. You get a date at the beginning of each chapter with a brief descriptive heading, such as “Chapter 43 - day 41 just got harder”, that sort of thing. I struggled mightily to remember to catch the date of the third, far away, storyline and then remember how it related to the dates of the other two stories, but it took a long time for me to get them straight. In retrospect it doesn’t really matter that much, and there’s an interesting correction right towards the end that caught my attention.

There’s a large cast of characters that are well read. The narrator differentiates well between them all, and his females are dealt with well. He has a large repertoire of accents he makes use of - I did wonder how so many “old Earth” accents could survive across the stars, but that was a very minor niggle, and it made scenes with several characters easy to follow.

Anyhow, the story. Hard to précis without giving away some real twists, some caught me out, some I saw coming, albeit fuzzily! Brother Biran annoyed me, totally fixated on determining his sister’s fate and unable to contemplate that there might be a bigger story. He does redeem himself somewhat, but he annoyed me. Sanda is great - dogged and determined, with a steely sense of what’s right and what’s not. She deals with the various hammer blows the fates deal her with a gritty determination to get through, to cope, to survive. The author has a habit of ending one chapter on a knife edge and starting the next with one of the other characters, leaving you waiting to find out what the hell happened next. Another reviewer says the book ends on a cliff hanger, I’d say it was more of a taut ending! You’re left knowing where everyone important is, and very interested to know what happens next. The far far away storyline remains fairly distant, but a connection emerges towards the end. It is a long book, and at times it’s a little slow, but lots happens with lots of surprises, so it never dragged for long. Worth the listen, and I’ll look out for the next, as long as it doesn’t take too long to arrive.

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4 people found this helpful

One of the best Space Operas I've heard for ages

This is a brilliant story, brilliantly narrated. Unlike most space operas, it is not wall to wall battles. Of course there is some conflict in it but mostly it is a very intelligent exploration of its subject, not to mention the massive and completely unexpected twist in the middle

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3 people found this helpful