Shards of Earth

De: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Narrado por: Sophie Aldred

Duración: 18 h y 43 m

Resumen del Editor

The Arthur C. Clarke award-winning author of Children of Time brings us an extraordinary space opera about humanity on the brink of extinction, and how one man's discovery will save or destroy us all.

The war is over. Its heroes forgotten. Until one chance discovery....

Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him in the war. And one of humanity's heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.

After Earth was destroyed, mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared - and Idris and his kind became obsolete.

Now, 50 years later, Idris and his crew have discovered something strange abandoned in space. It's clearly the work of the Architects - but are they returning? And if so, why? Hunted by gangsters, cults and governments, Idris and his crew race across the galaxy hunting for answers. For they now possess something of incalculable value, that many would kill to obtain.

©2021 Adrian Tchaikovsky (P)2021 Orbit

Space opera!

Great story with obviously more to come. And, the pronunciation of hegemony is correct - for UK English.

The story is incredible, The recording is garbage.

I have listened to at least a dozen of his books. He is, without a doubt, the Arthur C Clark of this generation. The story, although not one of his best, is brilliantly written and richly described with characters that you want to care about. Sadly, the recording is of such poor quality as to be distracting. It sounds like a scratchy record played in a 1920's gramophone. Additionally, for some incredible reason, the voice actor chose to make the main character sound like an epileptic stutterer. The fits and starts of his speech pattern make him difficult to understand.

Excellent book but the narration didn't work

As others have said, while the book is excellent, the narration just doesn't fit the dialogue. The narrator is very talented but her heavy British accent and high pitched voice just didn't fit the text. I finished the book but I almost gave up many times. Many of the characters sounded like they had voices out of a 15th century pub.

This kind of goes on and on.

I’m not going to knock the book or the story but for me it just kept dragging on and on and I just wanted it to get where it was going faster. The story on the other hand was fine getting there when ever it felt like it.

Tighten up the plot and stream line it and it would be far better.

The over arching threat is talked about and talked about and flash backs a few times. The books threat doesn’t show up till the last hour of the book. Yeah that means almost 18 hours of the book is filled with character building for the lack of a better word.

There is action along the way but it seemingly, as far as this book is concerned, not tied to the major threat of the world killers.

It feels like I came in half way into a story and the person telling the story is long winded and keeps adding more and more onto the story as embellishments.

I may read further books but after feeling like I just did a 20 mile hike I think I’ll hold off for now.

Great start to a new universe

This is a great read for fans of epic space operas. Very large scale. Huge universe. Story is a bit meandering at times but it seems more in the vein of Hamilton or Reynolds, in that you often have to take things at face value and accept that you are not going to understand exactly what Is happening until hundreds of pages, or a book or two, later.

I felt that AT’s previous works went a bit deeper, but that may be owing to AT planning on spending more than 2-3 books in this universe, and leaving room to breathe.

Narration was on point other than “hegemony” being pronounced differently than I pronounce it, which made me second-guess my pronunciation of it. I quickly moved on because who cares, there are like a million other words in this book.

Fun escapist clever sci-fi

We all need to escape and this clever space opera nailed it for me.

Excellent deep characters to bond with, expertly brought to life by the narrator, complete with brilliant UK provincial accents. Brummies and Mancs in space!

Another great epic by this author

Great universe, great characters. As usual, this author does not have much along the lines of deep fascinating ideas, or perfect 10 scenes... but the books are reliably an endless stream of 7 to 9 scenes, without being predictable or boring.

Fabulous!

This is one of the best sci-fi books I've read in a long time, the best book by this author I've read this far, and his works are always excellent. The characters and story are ingesting and engaging. I can't wait for the next in the series.

pleasantly surprised

The story didn't do anything completely new exactly, but it did some typical sci-fi things incredibly well. this isn't a hard sci-fi story and is more focused on characters. children of time/ruin, is still my favorite books from Tchaikovsky, but this story ended up being rather gripping, It was paced very well and had an intriguing finale. I was very surprised at how much I began caring for these characters, and found myself powering through the second half of the story because of how much I was enjoying it. also found the narration and performances done well, she finds distinct voices for all the characters that never sound too silly.

Out of sync

The theme and tone of this book did not match the affect of several of the characters.