Revelation Space

By: Alastair Reynolds

Narrated by: John Lee

Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself.

With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason. And if that reason is uncovered, the universe - and reality itself - could be irrevocably altered.

©2008 Alastair Reynolds (P)2008 Tantor

Critic reviews

"One of the best books of the year." ( Science Fiction Chronicle)
"Ferociously intelligent and imbued with a chilling logic - it may really be like this Out There." (Stephen Baxter, co-author of The Light of Other Days)

Good story. Too many similies...

I enjoyed this book and I even like John Lee(his best work is Three Muskateers, AWESOME BOOK). Everyone rags on him for not pausing, but HELLO maybe it was the editor. Ever think of that all you retards that complain. The only thing that got irritating was whenever something was described, it was "like a..." AHHH too many similies in this book. Also the use of "futuristic" terms and ideas was a little much sometimes. Other than that it was OK. Don't know if I'm gonna download next book though.

Eventually Just Had to Read the Rest

The ideas in this book are grand. They are awesome and worth buying the book. However, I can't fully recommend the audiobook. Not only is it hard to follow and demanding of one's full attention, but John Lee's voice work makes it even tougher to get through. I read another review that summed it up perfectly: John Lee does accents, not voices. Most of the characters in this book have French, Russian, or Japanese sounding names, which Lee took as an invitation to give the characters stereotypical accents that sound like what we think they should sound like. Unfortunately, he just can't pull it off and all the characters end up sounding like a bad Dracula impression and the voices tend to run together. It gets distracting. His normal narrating voice is great, but, alas, he ends up not using it that much given how much dialogue is in this book.

Just read it. And you should read it.

mental crack for a science enthusiast

loved the complex way science and theory were messed with solid storyline and interesting characters

Yawn/confused

It’s well written and I’m sure there are many out there who enjoy this sort of thing. I just couldn’t get into it, the story takes forever to get moving and the narrative jumps between storylines in a jarring manner that frequently left me wondering who we were talking about.
John Lee is always a joy to listen to but this one wasn’t his finest work.

Hard Sci-Fi Space Opera w/ terrible audio editing

The author exercises a strong imagination in creating an interesting universe within which a hard sci-fi space opera unfolds. While it took a while to become fully immersed in the story, I found it ultimately worthwhile.

Unfortunately the audio edition of this book is not well edited. As noted by other reviewers, there are scene changes with no audio queues to accompany them. These are manageable but certainly detract from the listening experience. In general they can be identified by which characters are present, but occasionally a scene change occurs without even initial narrative queues to recognise it by. In these situations I found I had to mentally replay the last 20 seconds and re-process them in a new context. This was quite aggravating, as it meant I couldn't just relax and enjoy the story.

I will listen to the next book in the series.

A slow ride to a quick end.

I found my self confused about who was who and where they were. The plot it's self was good. I was invested and wanted to see the end.

I love John Lee, however...

I think this is a producer issue, but the transitions between POVs were very confusing since there weren't any pauses of any sort. I had a lot of "WTF?" moments, and jumping back and forth just to figure out who was speaking.

Every time I listen it gets better

This is a real good Syfy book well written and well read. Highly recommend for any Sci-fi fan

Simply superb

Revelation space is good enough to enjoy multiple listening! That pretty much says it all

Big and Bold.

Any additional comments?

Lots of story lines kept me guessing for most of the book. It all came together at the very end (maybe a little too quickly and neatly). Characters are good. Interesting scenes and technical descriptions. Dark with not a lot of humor.