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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
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    374
  • 4 Stars
    498
  • 3 Stars
    351
  • 2 Stars
    105
  • 1 Stars
    34
Performance
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
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  • 4 Stars
    282
  • 3 Stars
    94
  • 2 Stars
    25
  • 1 Stars
    17
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    277
  • 4 Stars
    276
  • 3 Stars
    213
  • 2 Stars
    75
  • 1 Stars
    31

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

From Hypothertical to Pathetic , let down!

First, I loved Spin. This book while having a few things in common with the Spin is not the same story.

They leave Spin in a great place to start a 2nd book. Instead we get all new characters and a great premise that was wasted.

The idea of what this book could have been.... contact and it's excitement. Instead the author goes preachy and gets caught up trying to make a sociology story showing how smart he is. He tried to downplay the SciFi and go Brides of Madison County on us...
The reason I liked Spin was because of the hypothetical mystery, and the characters motivations to learn more.

Axis has weak characters, no mystery, no big ideas, and a blatant attempt by the author to prove he is just not SciFi. He failed at it.

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28 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

Spin off Axis

What was happening when the author wrote this sequel? I listened intently to every word and tried to imagine the characters as they were introduced but they were not as fully developed as the first set of characters in "Spin". The unresolved issue of the Hypothetical s was, to say the very least, disappointing. I had in my mind's eye foresaw the ending a different way and felt cheated with the ultimate outcome. Why leave the readers with no loose ends tied up? The explanation was like the name suggests...hypothetical. No-one knew, no-one was willing to fully explain and no-one seemed to care after 2 books and a dozen or so characters were possessed with finding an answer. It seemed like a least one would have been given the answer to all the mysteries and held on to the info maybe for another sequel.
I did enjoy listening to Scott Brick read this novel and at times I was on the edge of my seat in anticipation, but not often enough.
Note to writers: please don't ask readers to invest in novels that even you don't know how it should end.

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26 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Letdown

Some of the questions you wanted to know are answered, and some are not. The problem is that the main question "what are the hypotheticals" is not really answered". First part of book was hard to get through and the ending left me feeling cheated.

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22 people found this helpful

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

No Spin

I read Spin and I listened to Axis and Axis is no Spin. I was excited about this book as the three books of RCW that I had previously read where good to real good and Spin was the best. We go to an alternate world, where other authors would have had a field day exploring the new world. RCW tells us this world is a desert and it is boring. Wow, that didn't stop Frank Herbert. Silverberg could have done wonders with this world.

There is no character development at all, which is also different for RCW. We start out with this character named Isaac who seems would make a great leading character and he meets Sulean Moi who could also be a great character. Then comes chapter two and we meet Lise and Turk. It is several chapters before we get back to Isaac and then it is pretty much in passing until the end of the book. Turk is one of RCW's usual flawed characters, but even he is not developed and Lise is just a girl thrown in for a love interest, she has no character. RCW usually puts his Sci Fi in the background and in this book it is way in the back until the very end. Like so many other authors have done this second book is just filler to get us to the third book, Vortex. Based on other great books by this author I will listened to Vortex, I want to find out more about the Hypotheticals.

I must also mention that Scott Brick is one of my least favorite narrators. His reading is always over dramatic and he makes everybody sound sarcastic. Also there was some problem with the recording, at times it sounded like it was recorded under water.

Spin and Mysterium are my favorite RCW books and Chronoliths is good.

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A "must read" for Spin fans.

After reading several negative reviews from Audible customers, I almost passed on this sequel to "Spin." I'm glad I didn't, as I truly loved it. As Tyler and Diane Dupree cross the mysterious archway into a new world at the end of "Spin," we are left wondering what happens next. This book delivers the answers to our questions in a highly engaging manner. To those familiar with the "Spin" universe, this book makes perfect sense, and it does a great job of continuing to slowly reveal the extent and true nature of the Hypotheticals. Although it picks up the story many years later and Diane Dupree is the only returning character from the original, the novel nonetheless achieves its own high level of excellence.

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11 people found this helpful

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

Disappointed

I don’t really have much to say, I am overall pretty disappointed in this book.

I liked Book 1 (Spin) but Book 2 is not holding my attention, I don’t really find it that interesting, I feel like its flip flopping - but to be fair it’s probably because I am not devoted to the story.

I’m three quarters of the way done, so I’ll stick with it; I am passed the point of no return but I doubt I’ll bother with Book 3 (Vortex)

Regarding the narration, objectively Scott Brick is good however his cadence is very distracting to me. I keep listening to HOW he is saying things as opposed to WHAT he is saying – considering I am not that into the story, it doesn’t help!

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7 people found this helpful

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

I couldn't finish it...

I liked the first book, Spin, and I really wanted to enjoy this one but the story simply lies flat. This book starts on the new world merged with Earth via the last book with new characters, but there is no compelling plot or characters. sorry. I did like the first one though...

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

not as good as the first...

The hypotheticals play more of a role in this book, but the author still leaves a lot of questions. It's a classic filler novel, I'm sure that the author will answer a lot more questions in the final? book.

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5 people found this helpful

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

Spin: 9/10 , Axis: 2/10

Wow, what a disappointment. I was not able to immerse any portion of my attention throughout this book.

I don't know the political story, but it definitely feels like Wilson forced this series into a trilogy as an afterthought due to the success of Spin.

The reviews for Vortex are a little better, but I'm still on the fence on whether or not to listen to it. The problem is, after the debacle that is Axis,...I simply don't care about Robert Wilson's universe.

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4 people found this helpful

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

OK but not terribly exciting

3, maybe 2.5 stars. I had difficulty maintaining my interest in Axis. It just seems very slow and tedious. I often felt like saying, "Enough already with everyone's thoughts and feelings, tell me more cool sci fi shit." (But I never actually said that out loud.) RCW has ideas. I would like a novel from him that is a little shorter and loaded with cool, weird ideas. Despite my low/avg review, I will read Vortex some day.

Scott Brick is an OK narrator, but his phrasing can be a little monotonous and irritating at times.

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3 people found this helpful