Nor Crystal Tears

Humanx Commonwealth Series #3

De: Alan Dean Foster

Narrado por: Eric Jason Martin

A first-contact novel written from an alien perspective by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Trek Into Darkness.

Ryo is one of the Thranx, a race of social arthropods. From his larval years to now, his life has been normal, though his love of learning and insatiable curiosity set him apart. He has settled into his work as an agriculture specialist and is premated to a lovely female. Yet Ryo still feels something is missing from his life, and when he heroically defends his colony from the Thranx's reptilian nemesis, Ryo gets a taste of excitement that's hard to forget.

Then his premate shares a garbled message from her starship-captain cousin-one that hints at the discovery of a completely new, completely alien space-going intelligence. Even when the captain backtracks and denounces the experience as a deep-space nightmare, Ryo can't let it go. He becomes obsessed, leaving his colony and family behind to chase rumors of a murderous alien race, horrible beyond imagining. And when he finally makes it to an isolated military outpost rumored to harbor the captured aliens, he comes face-to-face with...humanity.

©1982 Alan Dean Foster (P)2024 Tantor

An endearing look at the future

It’s always nice to have a look at what might be and with a great story to boot

Classic Sci-Fi

Great narrator, very good book. It's great to finally see more of the sci-fi I read years and years ago available on Audible. Foster has always been a prolific author, even with this series of books coming out, there are always more series and titles I'd love to see. Can't wait for 'Sentenced to Prism'.

Wonderful

I first read this in 1982, when it came out. This is my second reading. It still “stands up”. What an excellent story! What a splendid title!

A Lifelong Favorite

I read this as a child and loved it. Listening to this very well made audiobook version brought back my original joy of reading it the vert first time.

youth

this story was one I read as a kid and was wonderful surprised to find it as an audio book.

Good story

Very fun story and Heinlein like in feeling. I would love to have had more story with this MC. There is a little bit of an info dump in the end and a rush to finish. That is my only complaint.

Great Narration, Good Concept, Story Problems

It's a fun premise and the audio narrator does a great job on the story, but it suffers from some really inconsistent character motivations and behaviors. Examples below

Spoilers:

The main character is relatively quickly brought to the point of being willing to mug and kill to avoid starvation. He is also later portrayed as being content with being dissected because he understands why the scientists would want that information.

Later on moral outrage over imprisoning people who had committed no crime is enough to outrage the main characters and drive them to defy their governments at great personal risk.

These same people will then later go on to kidnap children "for the greater good", despite the aliens being shown to value family ties.

Distracting Mistakes

Foster is a passable writer. It's an okay premise, though he's no master wordsmith. But the reader is dull in style and a bit dim in wit. For example, he pronounces the home planet of the insect Thranx, Hivehome, as hivvuh-home. Rips you out of the story every time. What was he thinking?