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Axis  By  cover art

Axis

By: Robert Charles Wilson
Narrated by: Scott Brick
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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

What listeners say about Axis

Average customer ratings
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • 3 Stars
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    31

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Cure for insomnia

This was so hard to get through. I actually put it on 1.25 x speed, Hoping to fast forward to something interesting. This speed made the ponderously slow and sleep inducing narrator palatable. Although I was still annoyed at how he would be inaudible one sentence , then blast out the next sentence. Very hard to listen to in the car. I stopped rewinding to hear what I missed because the characters were so dull and two dimensional, and they trudged through such Interminable dialogs of nothingness, that I realized I wasn't missing anything.. By the end it seems there is only one interesting thing revealed about the aliens, which happens to be repeated in every chapter, in every thought of every character- to the point where I stopped caring. Seriously this could have been condensed down to a half hour short story.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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This Book Needs A Review

When Scott Brick starts to sound like Charlie Brown's teacher, it's time to quit. Book just did not hit me like the first and the series won't get the chance to do #3.

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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

Disappointing

After listening to the first book in the series I was intrigued by the story and the world building. . While the narrator was excellent, the writing was lacking. This book bounces from one characters point of view to the other while keeping the same style of inner thinking through them all. Each different person uses the same vocabulary and might as well be the same character looking at events from a different location.
Overall, the snooks world building doesn’t move much and I never once began to care about any of the characters.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

good first book, bad second

Loved the first book, very disappointed with second. Boring and just uninteresting story line. concept has lots of potential, writer just drug out a weak story

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Terribly dull.

I enjoyed the first book very much but I had to give up on this one after a few hours. I kept hoping it would get interesting but alas...

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

An entertaining story with no end.

The first 7/8 of this book is thoroughly entertaining. The end makes one wonder if the author believed the novel was finished or if instead he simply ran out of paper and didn't feel like traveling to the shop to get more.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Terrible reading...

This guy whines out the words. Word after word. Drawn out whining. I have tried to finish this book multiple times but I cannot get past his reading style. Skip audiobook for this one and just read it.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

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.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

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.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

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.

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