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)

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.

Just a little hard to understand

Anybody who can explain this book, please have at it. Got it on special so I won't complain though. 22 hours and 12 minutes of pure "whut??"

Read negative reviews first

Is there anything you would change about this book?

This book should be available for hospital patients on life-support that need minimum stimulation for synaptic firing or patients with heart pacemakers that have a low battery.

Would you be willing to try another book from Alastair Reynolds? Why or why not?

I have read one of his books which made my current disappointment....

Did John Lee do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

I feel sleepy just thinking about the transitions between zombies.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No go, but might watch on Netflix at bedtime to see how fast the sandman comes.

Any additional comments?

If you read only the negative reviews and believe them - then one might hear / sense etc. something that I missed.

Love it!

This is truly one of the best hard sci-fi books to come out in a long, long time. Reynolds vision of the future is one that easily weaves together grand ideas with very human motives. The whole of the Revelation Space series is fantastic, but this is where it all begins.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The story is excellent and intriguing. The characters are believable and well fleshed out. Unfortunately, there are no breaks in the story given by the narrator, and on top of that, the narrator is brutally boring and distracting all at the same time. On a regular basis, he puts me to sleep.

What didn’t you like about John Lee’s performance?

He is incredibly boring. The only person even more boring than John Lee is my high school history teacher, and he was a man that always spoke in a dry monotone. John Lee took an incredible story and made it so boring that it is very hard to stay awake.

Do you think Revelation Space needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

There are already two.