The Forge of God

Thank you audible. I have been waiting years for the audible version of this novel, and am not disappointed. In my opnion this is Bear's best work. A perfect balance of science and drama, with very compelling characters. It builds slowly but brilliantly to its inevitable, terrifying, and heart breaking climax. Though it is bleak in some ways, and frightening, there is the ever present flicker of hope throughout. It is thoughtful, intelligent and haunting... A science fiction classic.

Greg Bear, yes. Stephen Davies, NOOO.

Eon. Eternity.

It was difficult to distinguish between characters and their personalities when he was narrating.

I actually purchased the hardcopy of the book and read it because I very much disliked the narration.

Awful narration.

I might give Greg Bear another shot someday, but I would definitely not pay for it. Stephen Bel Davies did a decent enough job.

He could've cut out the tons of superfluous point-of-view characters that were only there to fluff things out, and make the story seem more widespread. They rarely added anything to the story, and their undeserved melodrama just dragged things out and muddled things. "Oh look, here's another person that has no idea about what is going on, and is struggling with their emotions."

The first two acts of the book are a complete waste of time. Incomprehensible aliens mess with humanity's heads for no reason, while the central protagonists heads up a presidential task force that travels all over the world, discovering absolutely nothing.

There are perhaps two interesting ideas in the book, buried under acres of contrived angst. There is no story arc. No character development. Some decent speculation on how one can blow up the earth, and what that might look like. And hours of boredom.

The one where nothing happened, and people were angsty and uncertain about it. Then something semi interesting popped up, and the story suddenly cutaway to another boring character before you could be entertained.

Disappointment. I thought Bear would be better.

Save yourself the trouble and read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia instead. You'll get just as much out of it with out wasting hours of your life.

The narrator is really engaging; he completely brings the story alive. With most books it takes me a little while to get into the story, and this one was no different. But after about 30 minutes or so I was hooked. Very entertaining.

People who believe that Aliens will arrive speaking English. I'm not one of them.

People of faith are automatically crazy. As already mentioned Aliens arrive speaking English.

Drags

disappoinment amd annoyance, if I had known what it was really about I could have avoided wasting my money.