The Wrong Stars

By: Tim Pratt

Narrated by: John Glouchevitch

Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

A ragtag crew of humans and posthumans discover alien technology that could change the fate of humanity...or awaken an ancient evil and destroy all life in the galaxy.

The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact.

When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials...and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.

©2017 Tim Pratt (P)2018 Tantor

Great book

Loved it, was compelled to listen more and more. Didn't want it to end as the story grew.

Exciting and wildly interesting technology

I really enjoyed the world-building in this book. While some of the LGBTQ romantic relationships were a little pedestrian, overall the character development and world building is phenomenal. I loved all the human-cyborg stuff as well as the way aliens were depicted with their culture, science and technology. This reminded me ever so slightly of Becky Chambers book “a long journey to a small angry planet”, so if you enjoyed that book I’d say you would enjoy this. Very surprising and cool. Definitely not what I expected when I started it and I found the sci-fi elements very fresh, new and exciting.

A solid Space Opera with twists and turns

Tim Pratt has such a wonderful, descriptive, and humorous voice. I fell in love with his short fiction and decided to give his long Works a try. This is an excellent story and well worth a read for any sci-fi fan.

I love these books!

I've already read this series and love these books. just the right mix of humor and action. the audio version was even better

Fun, but a little fumbling

This book reads a lot like a Becky Chambers work: it's a rag-tag group of space faring mercenaries whose predominant characteristic is that they are all just exquisitely *nice*. To that extent, it's lacking the usual dark undertones you'd expect in the genre, and the characters all feel very one-sided for all their varied backstories.

However, Pratt does manage to add more menace to the plot than Chambers, and clearly has a single coherent narrative--making a step up from what Lonely Planet presents as almost a collection of short stories. And while the lack of tonal depth makes the story feel flat, I do like the characters anyway and will likely pick up volume two.

Glouchevitch performs the work well, though his almost-whispering presentation tends to make this feel like a fall-asleep-reading kind of book.

One of the best books I've ever heard!

The book is great. The story is great. The characters are great. The performance was great. The pacing was great. The world-building was great. Everything about this book was close to perfection.

The only thing that bugged me was how it ended on such an obvious sequel hook, but then, I was only upset because I cannot start reading the sequel immediately.

It was "ok".

I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either. I found myself a little bored.

story falls apart tpwards the end

the story accidently hits a BAD END and the writer creates a dues ex machina that the main characters trust without even knowing their name or alliegience. This is after spending about several chapters questioning the loyalty of new crewmember and even holding that crewmember at gunpoint and threat for messing up simple things.

inventive but juvenile

Decently inventive conceptualization of alien species and civilizations that is somewhat well told and excellently performed. However the story is rather shallow, obvious, trite, and lacking in the science part of science fiction. The ruination of the work is the author's juvenile fascination with lesbian flirtation and sex that constantly intrudes on the narrative like a horny teenage boy having a fantasy. It's so shallow and transparently the authors fetish that it's offensive.

Great concept, poor execution

Pratt has good world-building and an excellent underlying idea, but flat characters, inconsistent tone, excessive exposition, and a plot on rails means I won't be continuing the series.