Somehow, this book combines heavy theoretical physics and a love story in a way that actually works. For those with more restrained natures, the sexua..Show More »lity might be a bit much, but it was not gratuitous and did fit into the story.
If you like a universe that hangs together and abides by it's own laws, you will enjoy this one. If detours into technical explanations of how the 'magic' works annoy you, then you may find this tedious in places. Personally, I found the explanations added to the depth of the artificial universe created by Asaro, and the characters are interesting. Overall, it's not a bad listen (although it did take me some time to get used to the reader's "male voices" - they sounded a bit odd).


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Catherine Asaro writes fantastic science. She obviously puts much thought into her story plots and expends exactly the right amount of effort developi..Show More »ng the character population in each book. The only problem that keeps her from being a great story teller is that Asaro writes about military behavior with the experience level of a lifetime civilian; which doesn't work very well.

An example of this can be seen In "The Last Hawk," where she has a high ranking military officer disregarding even the most basic sworn oaths of office that every service member (officer and enlisted) must take. She even has him committing treason by swearing loyalty to the enemy in exchange for privileges and favored treatment. That blatant disregard for military behavior seriously flaws what would otherwise be an excellent book in an outstanding series.

Now, having said that, I must add this. If your only exposure to proper military behavior is what you see on TV or in the Movies, then you will more than likely have no problems with anything Asaro writes in that department. I'm critical of her treatment in that area because I spent the majority of my adult life in a military uniform and I expect authors to be, at least, slightly familiar with the subject when they use it in their stories. Unfortunately, very few of them are.

I enjoyed reading this book, and the series, because the science was so well thought out. I expect that most of you will as well.

I also recommend that you listen to the books in the order in which they were written, not in the order recommended by Audible.






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Read the Radiant Seas because the universe where it is set and the players behind Soz and Jabriel interest you and you'll not be disappointed. If you ..Show More »read it because you enjoy Soz and Jabriel and want to continue their story--then skip most of the first part. If you belong to the former group, there's some great writing about the Imperator and insight into his troubled past and present. If you're part of the latter group, skip to the rescue and you'll not be disappointed. The two halves of the book form an interesting cycle of events and themes that once I got over my annoyance that Soz and Jabriel were mostly absent from the first half, I actually enjoyed. It's actually a good book if you read it with the right mind frame and know going in that you'll have wait for Soz and Jabriel to return to the mix. There are three really great sequences that truly make the book worth listening to. I can only give this book three stars because it should really have been split in two. It functions as two separate books and has two separate climaxes and resolutions. The narrator did a great job considering the sheer number of characters.

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Enjoyed this one also. Decided to get the rest of the series in paperback. Now that I'm hooked on the Skolian story I just can't wait for Audible to t..Show More »rickle the books out.

Anna Fields' male voices weren't as bad as usual, but I wish she would not use the nasal teenage-boy voice for the main characters. Makes it difficult to take what they say seriously.

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I was hoping this would be better than "Catch the Lightening" and more like "Primary Inversion", her first 2 books of the series...but it sort of fell..Show More » in the middle for me. The plot was hard to grasp, because the main focus of the book was the romance. The one thing I really like about Asaro's writing is her beautiful descriptions of other worlds with their multiple moons, stained-glass forests, exotic creatures...and that's the only reason I will keep reading her, because the plots and the characters just don't have a lot of depth.

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Well, I can't say I wasn't warned. But I was anxious to find out what happens next in the series. I thought, how bad can the narrator be? In the first..Show More » few minutes, I agreed with the other reviewers that she sounds childish, but I thought I could put up with it for this one volume. Then I realized that the viewpoint character was Dehya Selei, the elegant, powerful mathematical genius and Ruby Pharoah of the Skolian Imperialate. When she chirps, "I created the psiberweb," in a tone and cadence you might expect to hear "I created a new Barbi costume," I gave up. I'm buying the paper book.

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I enjoyed this story very much. I thought the plot and characters were well developed and provides a great launching board to the next books in the Sk..Show More »olian Empire series, even though it was written in 2003 after 8 other books. So if you haven't read/listened to any of the others start with this one.
Even though the narrator did an adequate job, I found it frustrating that some of her pronunciations were inaccurate. It was very frustrating that she mispronounced psion with a hard p (instead of with a silent p). Some other well-known words were also pronounced in unusual ways and I just had to block it out. I wish narrators had time to check out how words in previous works in the same series were pronounced to provide a bit more continuity.

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I don't know how the producers could have someone who can't pronounce neutrino narrate this story. The inconsistency between narrators of books in the..Show More » series is annoying, but mispronouncing scientific words in books that are so heavily embroidered with science is maddening.

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I loved Final Inversion and many of the other stories in this series but this and Schism are not the best and in many ways, because of the reader, are..Show More » probably the worst in the series. I am very disappointed in Audible and Catherine Asaro for the reading of these books as they are not to the level of the first books which were offered on this service.
Consistency is the key and there have been too many versions of the pronounciation, inflection and pacing of the reading, let alone the obvious lack of effort from the author.
Stick with the original four or five stories which were offered on Audible and don't waste your money on the last four or six.

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I loved the book just like I loved all of the other ones in this series.
The only thing that drove me crazy is that the reader did not listen to..Show More » any of the other books before she read this book, and she mispronounced some of the main titles.
I feel that if Audible is going to use different readers for a series they should at least make them listen to the first book so that even if the pronunciation is wrong in the first book at least that way the rest will be the same.


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While it's true that this gives a view of what a rock star's life might be like, for those who've enjoyed the Skolian saga, there are many small piece..Show More »s that come together. I like the narrator, though I am sorry that he had to try to sing; his gift is effective reading.

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