Axis

By: Robert Charles Wilson

Narrated by: Scott Brick

Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Wildly praised by readers and critics alike, Robert Charles Wilson's Spin won science fiction's highest honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Now, in Spin's direct sequel, Axis, Wilson takes us to the "world next door"—the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world—and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria.

Lise Adams is a young woman attempting to uncover the mystery of her father's disappearance ten years earlier. Turk Findley is an ex-sailor and sometimes-drifter. They come together when an infall of cometary dust seeds the planet with tiny remnant Hypothetical machines. Soon, this seemingly hospitable world will become very alien indeed--as the nature of time is once again twisted, by entities unknown.

©2007 Robert Charles Wilson (P)2008 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“The long-anticipated marriage between the hard sf novel and the literary novel, resulting in an offspring possessing the robust ideational vigor of the former with the graceful narrative subtleties of the latter, might finally have occurred in the form of Robert Charles Wilson's Spin.…Wilson does so many fine things, it's hard to know where to begin to praise him.” —The Washington Post

Struggles to live up to the grandeur of Spin

Struggles to live up to the grandeur of it's predecessor with respect to it's characters, narrative, and emotional depth. More appropriate as a short story.

Not as good as Spin, but may be worth it

What did you like best about Axis? What did you like least?

I'm waiting to see how the series ends. If its ends well than I am okay with working through this one. I know that one of the characters you think is dead is a part of the next book. So we will see! As a stand alone the book was only ok.

Good story but ending left me wanting more

The books was good. I pretty much inhaled this book as fast as I did Spin. I saw people complain about character development and lack of imagination when it came to the world and scenery, but I felt like both were appropriate and more would have been unnecessary. Part of the reason I like these books is that it’s very focused on the story and the theoretical explanations of the mysterious elements of the story. I did however feel underwhelmed by the ending but not so much that it took too much away from my overall feelings about the book.

Brilliant! Galactic time scale, not human.

I suspect most readers are expecting a story on human time. Without that expectation this is very enjoyable.

left more questions than answering the existing

the story was not as innovative as Spin not intoducing enough new ideas in comparison

A lot of nothing.

I was hoping for a unique story and I got it, unfortunately it was a slow slog to nowhere. I kept waiting for a profound alien with cosmic wonder but it didn't happen. Narration was great but Scott couldn't save this one for me.

Not a great sequel

While I enjoyed Spin, I was disappointed in Axis. Very poor character building and bringing forth only Diane from the first book was disappointing. The story wasn’t compelling.

Character Driven, But Ultimately Lacking Plot

I loved the first book - Spin, and expected more of the same from the sequel. While this is still a great character novel, it unfortunately simply has much less actually happen throughout the book. Part of this is because it covers a much shorter time span than the first novel did, but with that aside it still lacks any significant events to drive the characters forward.

If you loved the first book, you'll still enjoy this one, but fair warning, it doesn't quite live up to it's predecessor. I'm starting the third one now and hopefully that one improves upon this.

Good idea, just not as well done as Spin

For the most part I enjoyed this book. The premise of the story is great and was well written, up until the end. I was totally into the story, following along word for word, until the author dropped me off a cliff a the end. I felt like he spent all this time (the entire book) building up this great story, and then just wrapped everything up nice and neat in about 5 mins. It was a bit of a let down. I was expecting more at the end. Maybe more will be explained in the next book.

As for the narrator, again, as with Spin, his voice just doesn't sit right with me for some reason. I am not real crazy about how he makes his distinction between the male and female parts (when he is speaking their dialogue). The males are always strong and very outspoken whereas he speaks the female lines very timidly, with a soft voice. I feel it takes away from some very strong female characters that the author has written.

Overall it was an okay book, good story, not crazy about the end. Definitely not as good as Spin. I'm hoping the final book in the trilogy is better than this one.

Read SPIN first.

These aren't easily understood, stand-alone books.

The narrator needs some energy drink. If you want to fall asleep to a good book this is it. He has the voice of a bored high school science teacher. It seems he sometimes gets his characters mixed up as well.