Jana

Having started at the beginning, and loving the Honor Harrington series, it was very disappointing to find the last couple of books less than I had hoped for, but I had to speak up with this one. I agree with an earlier reviewer about the use of "on the other hand". It occurs so often in this one, that I find myself rolling my eyes every time it occurs. That is bad enough, but the use of other cliches is simply so glaring! For example: "sitting ducks", "half-cocked", "million-dollar question", "smoking gun", if you can think of one, it is probably in there - literally dozens and dozens of anachronistic cliches that have no place in the far future, particularly when Allyson Johnson has chosen to give nearly everyone except Honor a bad accent. What is with the French accent?...it is awful!--please stop! Mr. Weber went a bit overboard in the ruminations of the characters, to the detriment of the story. He DOES tell a very, very good story, and it is in there...but it is being buried by too much of what is on the characters minds or excruciatingly long descriptions of motivations or explanations of the inner workings of this or that. Get back to the STORY, man... you are certainly capable of it. Please lose the cliches and the accents They do not advance the story and are irritating in the extreme. The three stars is generous, overall, but because I like so much of the actual story, it was fair.

This was my first audio book, as well as my first Elizabeth Bear book. The writing was exquisitely well crafted; her prose was simply wonderful to listen to and, because of this, I plan to read it as well. The story was compelling, leading the reader on to understand the complexities of "the world" that was the stranded generation ship, with its ship mind/AI fragmented into pieces, the "angels". Very ingenious and well done. Without burdening the reader with endless technical descriptions, she illuminates the characters and brings them into vivid focus. The narrator was perfect.