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Poseidon's Wake
- Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh
- Length: 27 hrs and 4 mins
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Publisher's summary
"Few SF writers merge rousing adventure with advanced futuristic technology as skillfully as Alastair Reynolds" (Toronto Star), the award-winning author of On the Steel Breeze.
In the conclusion of his Poseidon's Children saga, the Akinya family receives an invitation from across the stars - and a last opportunity to redeem their name....
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They are the last survivors of their race, beings who live on and communicate through energy, who are capable of assuming the shape of any other species. When their youngest member is assigned to a world considered safe to explore, she is captured by the natives. To escape, she must violate the most important rule of her kind, and reveal the existence of her species to a fellow prisoner - a human being. Now her race is in danger of extinction, for even if the human does not betray her, the Enemy who has long searched for her people may finally discover their location.
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Julie E. Czerneda on Audible=WIN
- By Marniac on 08-06-12
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A Talent for War
- An Alex Benedict Novel
- By: Jack McDevitt
- Narrated by: Gregory Abbey, Jack McDevitt
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Everyone knew the legend of Christopher Sim. Fighter. Leader. An interstellar hero with a rare talent for war, Sim changed mankind's history forever when he forged a ragtag group of misfits into the weapon that broke the back of the alien Ashiyyur. But now, Alex Benedict has found a startling bit of information, long buried in an ancient computer file. If it is true, then Christopher Sim was a fraud.
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Very good - but the cover and title are deceptive
- By Brian on 09-25-10
By: Jack McDevitt
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Intrinsic
- By: Philip C. Quaintrell
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Kalian Gaines has a secret; he just doesn't know it yet. He looks like us, he lives like us...but he is not one of us. Kalian knows nothing outside of his mundane life teaching history on 30th-century Earth, until a day like any other triggers a series of events that will tie his fate to that of humanity. A human handprint, embedded into a rock with alien script, is discovered on a moon that mankind has never set foot on. This discovery holds a secret, which will sweep Kalian into the heart of a conspiracy that has corrupted the galaxy for 200,000 years.
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Unexpectedly Brilliant
- By Fraser on 04-22-18
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Prominence
- By: A. C. Hadfield
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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They tried to destroy our planets. Our way of life. They tried to send us into extinction. But we, the Coalition, fought them and won. That was a decade ago. They’re known as the Host: a cabal of aliens seeking to dominate our sector of space. And they’re back - with help from a powerful new enemy. We’re outnumbered and unprepared. But there is hope. An ancient race of long-dead but technologically advanced aliens called the Navigators have a ship called the Blackstar that could potentially turn the tide. That is if I, Kai Locke, a humble ship racer, can find it and learn how to harness its power in time.
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Newly found love.
- By L. Rampey on 03-22-19
By: A. C. Hadfield
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Diving into the Wreck
- Diving Series, Book 1
- By: Kristine Kathryn Rusch
- Narrated by: Jennifer Van Dyck
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Boss loves to dive historical ships, derelict spacecraft found adrift in the blackness between the stars. Sometimes she salvages for money, but mostly she's an active historian. She wants to know about the past--to experience it firsthand. Once she's dived the ship, she'll either leave it for others to find or file a claim so that she can bring tourists to dive it as well. It's a good life for a tough loner, with more interest in artifacts than people.
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NOT Clive Cussler in Space
- By W. S. on 03-18-10
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The Course of Empire
- By: Eric Flint, K. D. Wentworth
- Narrated by: Chris Patton
- Length: 18 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Conquered by the Jao twenty years ago, the Earth is shackled under alien tyranny - and threatened by the even more dangerous Ekhat, one of whose genocidal extermination fleets is coming to the solar system. The only chance for human survival is in the hands of an unusual pair of allies: a young Jao prince, newly arrived to Terra to assume his duties, and a young human woman brought up amongst the Jao occupiers. But, as their tentative alliance takes shape, they are under pressure from all sides.
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ERIC FLINT'S VENTURE INTO FULL SCI-FI MODE
- By Professor on 11-01-12
By: Eric Flint, and others
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The Dark Between the Stars
- The Saga of Shadows, Book One
- By: Kevin J. Anderson
- Narrated by: Mark Boyett
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Twenty years after the elemental conflict that nearly tore apart the cosmos in The Saga of Seven Suns, a new threat emerges from the darkness. The human race must set aside its own inner conflicts to rebuild their alliance with the Ildiran Empire for the survival of the galaxy. In Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and factions of humanity are pitted against one another.
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TASTE LIKE EYEBALLS BOILED IN URINE
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 06-07-15
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Seveneves
- A Novel
- By: Neal Stephenson
- Narrated by: Mary Robinette Kowal, Will Damron
- Length: 31 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.
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Odd narrator choice
- By Josh Mitchell on 05-30-15
By: Neal Stephenson
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Distress
- By: Greg Egan
- Narrated by: Adam Epstein
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Investigative reporter Andrew Worth turns down a documentary on a mysterious new mental illness - "Distress," or acute clinical anxiety syndrome, for another assignment. He's on his way to the artificial island of Stateless, where the world's top physicists are gathering to decide on a new TOE, or Theory of Everything, to replace Einstein's outmoded legacy.
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A good book ruined by a poor (and strange) reading
- By David on 12-06-13
By: Greg Egan
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barely more than a short story.
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The Kaiju Preservation Society
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When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food-delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls “an animal rights organization”. Tom’s team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on. What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world.
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I'm listening with a permanent smile on my face
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What listeners say about Poseidon's Wake
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Autumn
- 02-18-16
Reads like it's lacking plot revisions
There's something admirably simple about this trilogy, especially when you zoom out and look at the romantic bird's eye view, but something about its storytelling method just doesn't sit right with me.
The trilogy was rendered for us as a long string of montages between rather sparse events. Time and attention went into every scene, but it's all just characters standing around, with no ability to act on what little information they have. Subplots spring up everywhere, and turn out to be completely pointless as soon as the story moves on. The only result is that the character personalities are colored just slightly. Even the events that are at the heart of the story come off strangely. A transmission sent across 70 lightyears just for fun apparently, a sabotage plot that exists for essentially no reason, and of course the centerpiece of the whole series, Poseidon itself, completely ignored by the cast, even at the culmination of events.
The only reason the story has any purpose at all is because Eunice's character regularly forces narrative on the reader in the form of random conjecture, covering topics such as the Watchkeepers, Poseidon and its wonders, what the Endbuilders's must have intended for the universe, their solution to a universe-scale issue, what Poseidon must represent for other species. As a reader, it's all so hollow that you start to see through it rather quickly.
This story, most of all, communicated the uniqueness of everyone's relationships with other characters, and there are a couple of magnificent scenes that were likely At the core of Reynolds's vision for the story, and yet somehow all of the characters come up short in my view. They all say the predictable thing. They all complain in the expected manner. They offer each other perfectly reasonable but highly mundane comforts. They seem to act and think in a contextual vacuum, as if every scene was written independently, somehow only vaguely influenced by events that literally just took place.
When the story is somehow most vulnerable and begging for plot advancement, it's given to us in some supremely bizarre anti-"deux ex machina", something that puts a wrench in the whole story just so that the story should go where Reynolds imagined it should. Mpose's role, Kanu's ship damaged around Poseidon, the use of nanomachinery, the sabotage plot, Eunice's ability to send a message across 70 ly of space and yet can't produce a signal strong enough to contact a ship in the same system, Eunice's alarmingly selective loss of memory any time she might actually be useful... all of it exists just to give texture to something that is frankly quite boring. These are all just loose ends that I guess Reynolds thought there was no reason to tie back into the story, and none of the characters seem to notice.
As a fan of Reynolds, I don't begrudge him the time and effort that he put into this trilogy. The idea for the whole thing must have been infectious, consuming his attention. Now that he's finished it, I'll be happy to see him turn to other stories.
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- Mall Cop
- 11-23-19
Drink every time you hear the word "Chai"
I finally finished the ser-r-r-r-ries. The storr-r-r-r-y itself is fine. Wor-r-r-r-rth the time. Again, it's the nar-r-r-r-ration/performance that is r-r-r-r-ridiculous. Appar-r-r-r-rently, in the futur-r-r-r-re, ever-r-r-r-ryone eitherr-r-r-r r-r-r-r-olls their R's to the point of absur-r-r-r-rdity (and I can't ser-r-r-r-riously can't make it clear-r-r-r-r enough how much I HATED hea-r-r-r-r-ring that over and overr-r-r-r-r and over-r-r-r-r to make my point), they sound like a Bella Lugosi vampir-r-r-r-r-re that r-r-r-r-rrolls their-r-r-r-r-r R's, or like a Japanese anime kid's character-r-r-r-r that r-r-r-r-r-olls their R's. Befor-r-r-r-r-re I ever-r-r-r-r-r listen to another-r-r-r-r Adjoa Andoh nar-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-rated book, I'll download a sample and check for that fir-r-r-r-rrst. The ONLY r-r-r-r-eason I finished the ser-r-r-r-ries was that it's an Alastair-r-r-r-r-r R-r-r-r-reynolds book.
And if you want a good dr-r-r--rinking game, chug a beer-r-r-r-r ever-r-r-r-ry time you hear-r-r-r-r the wor-r-r-r-d "Chai". You'll need a 12 step pr-r-r-rogram before it's over-r-r-r-r.
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- Michael G Kurilla
- 05-12-16
Poseidon's funeral would be more appropriate
Poseidon’s Wake is the 3rd installment of Alastair Reynold’s Poseidon’s Children trilogy. This installment is several hundred years after volume 2 with Crucible now a functioning planet. The Watchkeepers have rendered interstellar travel risky, but a “message” from an uninhabited star system directed at a specific Akinya launches a 140 year voyage to solve the mystery. At the same time, another Akinya back in the Earth system aligns with the machines from Mars to investigate. The mystery surrounding Eunice, Chiku, and Dakota is revealed as well as background on the Watchkeepers and the 2nd alien race that built the mandala.
The sci-fi elements expand the elephant intelligence theme as well as building on the Eunice artificial intelligence, now rendered into actual flesh and blood. The Watchkeepers are revealed as a type of zombie intelligence with consciousness. Much of the sci-fi revolves around the varying manifestations of intelligence. But the truly mind bending aspect is an exploration of the fundamental laws of physics that offer the possibility of meaningless existence since everything could wink out as a result of quantum flux. There are hints at actually attempting to reverse engineer the laws of the universe to eliminate this threat.
This is a hard listen on many levels. The fundamental science fiction is philosophically engrossing, but the plodding nature of plot development along with unengaging characters can become tiresome. The fundamental structure of Reynold’s universe is based on futuristic dominance by Africa that was never sufficiently detailed. North and South America do not exist, Europe has been reduced to just Lisbon, and China merely garners a single representative who is now a whale, while Chinese is sometimes the alternate language. Humanity is basically a hive, not a hive mind, but just a hive. Akinya women are the queen bees, while Akinya men are the male drones supporting the queens, with the rest of humanity reduced to worker bees. Everything in existence has derived from Akinya women from business and economics by Eunice, art by Sunday, and science by Ndigi, working under house arrest at her kitchen table. There’s one Russian operating as a hit man with no motivation for his actions. The Lin Wei conversion to a whale renders her a type of hermit living in a cave that somehow people derive wisdom by just talking to her.
Then there’s the fascination with “tantors” which are just genetically enhanced elephants. There is an almost atavistic obsession with a Kafka-esque man creating God quality with sycophantic worship to the point that one tantor equates to thousands of human. At the same time, a small splinter group is so terrified of tantors, there is a willingness to stage a suicide mission to kill them off the on chance they happen to be found. The proposed rationale justifying this behavior as due to man’s treatment of elephant seems hardly reasonable since horses have probably been treated worse and cows were raised merely for food. Despite the length, the Earth system is inadequately detailed to understand the terrorists and the consolidation.
The characters are annoyingly tiresome. Eunice is an obnoxious, narcissistic Forrest Gump who manages to create who technologies and economies merely by changing her socks. Goma and Ru are constantly morphing all the time except for their tantor obsession and Carno who begins as a diplomat, somehow becomes a science and techno geek. Finally, the notion that if a smart alien intelligence reveals the underlying physics of the universe can be proven to be meaningless because it can end at any moment would somehow be readily believed and then induce depression and catatonia is a bit far-fetched.
The narration is the final element that is troublesome. While accurately rendered with realistic African accents, the melodic trilling and rolling of every “r” will either be favorably enjoyed or quickly become tiresome and straining. There’s also little gender distinction except for the non-African accented characters. Finally, just as a cinematic ceiling fan indicates higher ambient temperature by spinning slower, the more intelligent, especially the elephants, the slower the speech which simply drags everything out.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Trip Williams
- 05-02-16
5 Stars because I HOPE this series is DONE!
The "ELEPHANTS - IIIIN - SPAAAAACE" (Insert Dramatic Echoing on the word "SPAAAAACE") theme is WAY past "Old" and into the realm of "Getting Ridiculous"....
I've spent some time in Africa, Seen the "Wild Elephants" (not the ones in "preserves"), and there's one sad, but HARD truth, about Africa... "If an Animal Species can't support itself monetarily, with enough money coming in to hire HONEST Game Wardens and to pay for the land they're living on, the animal species has a short time left on earth in Africa" ..."The Great White Hunter" didn't make a DENT in the Elephant Population.. The AFRICANS kill(ed) 99% of the Elephants that are (and have been in the past) killed.
I don't like it, but I don't have to like it, it's "Africa", and they do things "The African Way".... I.E: "No no no no! Absolutely you can NOT go there or see that".. and then 'a little money changes hands', and suddenly you Absolutely CAN "Go There and See That"... WITH transportation, AND a government guide!
For another 10USD per day, you can hire people to haul your gear, set up tents, DOUBLE-Boil your water, and cook your food (tip, make SURE the cook washes their hands, and that the plates, utensils and cups are 'Bleached and BOILED', AND that they Cook your meal VERY VERY 'WELL DONE!')... "No" simply means "Not until we get a small 'gratuity' for allowing you to do whatever it was you wanted to do"
I can't wrap my mind around how Mr. Reynolds can write some books that are SO DEEP and FANTASTIC, and then write about "ELEPHANTS - IIIIIN - SPAAAAAACE".
Sorry, but EVERYTHING I've seen firsthand about Wild Elephants tends to lead me to the belief that they are kinda like "not-smart Horses" in the Brain department... Like Horses, You can always tell exactly what an elephant is going to do... "Whatever goes through their little Elephant/Horse Mind at that EXACT SECOND".
The whole "Flying around in a Cessna with a herd of Smart Elephants in a hidden Section of a Generation ship" takes MUCH more than just "Suspending reality 'since it's Sci-Fi'".
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- Connie J. Cooper
- 03-30-22
Reynolds has a different kind of brain...
than do most of us, I believe. I've never read someone who gets "alien" so...alien-y...yet so utterly believable. This is the 3rd in the series. Strongly recommend reading in order.
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- Lewis
- 04-26-16
Excellent performance
this was a excellent audio performance paired with a reasonably good conclusion to the trilogy but not the equal of the first or second books
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- marsbars
- 12-21-23
Hard Sci-Fi w/ a Global (non-western) Frame of Reference
It is my personal opinion that Reynolds had two major issues when putting together this trilogy.
First he was writing from the perspective of women in much of these stories.
The second was that he was writing from a non-western African perspective. The story repeatedly goes back to talking about Chinese and Swahili being the dominant cultural lingua franca along with the idea that many of the world’s great thinkers are from both Asia and Africa moving forward rather than North America or Europe.
For the second reason alone, I was very interested in these stories. While acknowledging that Reynolds is a white male author, whose primary life experience took place in the western world, I admire him for writing hard science fiction with this backdrop. I thoroughly enjoyed it as somebody who has worked in Africa, and somebody who’s best friends are from Africa and Asia. I believe this is the first and only work of hard fiction I’ve ever had the opportunity to read that comes from the global south’s perspective. I very much recommend it to connoisseurs of hard science fiction. I also appreciate Reynold’s scientific background and describing the difficulties that the characters encounter. It gives every story he writes authenticity, that other writers like Peter Hamilton, lack.
The narration was just fun! The narrator’s voice and intonation when she spoke, as Eunice was fun and made the story really come alive. It felt like I was listening to multiple actors. People who are unfamiliar with various accents from around the continent may complain, people who are overly familiar with various accents from around the continent, who Snub the voice actor as being unauthentic… they all can just take a chill pill.
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- GUGLHUPF
- 09-17-23
It's not the story - it's the narrator
I need to return this. This narrator is horrible. Cannot stand her. She is OK with the main characters, but the rest is like childrens book witches. Horrible. Combine that with a slow story and I am out. Sorry.
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- Matthew Strom
- 04-18-23
Surprisingly bad
I’m usually a fan of Reynold’s work. 1st book was refreshing and fun, second didn’t get good until the second half, this book never got good and was incredibly disappointing.
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- Cory Abdalla
- 02-24-23
Amazing hard sci fi
Alastair Reynolds is one of the great sci fi writers of our time. Highly recommend
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