At the Pace of Man

By: Devyn Regueira

Narrated by: Tracy Collier

Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

Forty light years outside their celestial nursery and a handful of scientific revolutions beyond their reach, humanity’s attention is drawn toward a garden in the night. The TRAPPIST-1 system, comprised of an ornery dwarf star and her seven fertile daughters, seems nothing short of an Earth-in-waiting to the fervid ambitions of a species just now beginning to outgrow the cradle.

Some centuries after and some distance away, the dollar is obsolete and salaries are paid in access to scarce Suspension Pods - the almighty Minute. Every working man and woman born aboard the ITS Santa Maria is pursuing a chance at sleeping away the waning decades of the interstellar voyage they’d inherited to nurture for themselves that garden in the night. For a restless few, a chance isn’t good enough and neither is the pay.

Drastic measures will be undertaken and political anachronisms revived as struggles of an ancient character threaten to undo a mission of post-scarcity proportions. Whatever the danger, though, be it on the first attempt or the hundredth and at any expense, that humanity would not be denied his new conquest was never in doubt.

But to survive a trip on the scales of light, it was inhumanity which had learned to be crafty.

©2020 Devyn Regueira (P)2024 Devyn Regueira

Fails to live up to potential

I can’t help feeling like this book could have been so much more. I didn’t end up really caring about any of the characters or what might happen to them. My biggest complaint is the abrupt ending. I can’t remember the last time a book slammed the door in my face like this. I’m used to ambiguous endings but with this books you feel like it built up to it and the rest is up to you interpretation. Here it simply feels like the last quarter of the book was missing.

hidden gem

A highly enjoyable hard sci-fi. The book has a rhythm. There is a sharp juxtaposition between two civilizations at the far ends of the technological spectrum. A play between analytical and philosophical musings. A balance of crude humor and solemnity. There are parallels of struggle, joy and the coming of age. I recommend this book not only for it's story, but also it's prose and style. It's full of witty and deep idioms. I find myself wanting to dive right back in upon finishing.

A unique story with a spirited narration

I’m a fan of alternating storylines and enthusiastic British narration. This audiobook delivers on both and hasn’t left me falling asleep at the the wheel. While I won’t get into details, the story feels about as unique as something Asimov or David Brin might have concocted, which is to say, very. The only caveat to that is that the story has the typical strong anti-capitalist overtures common to most sci-fi. To the writers credit, she gets there in a unique way which ends up adding to the story.

I tried …

First off, the narration is by a British woman. Her voices are almost indistinguishable from each other. I can’t tell if the character is male or female half the time. Her delivery is just awful. Very hard to follow the dialog. I’ve listened to other British narrators like Steven Brand and John Lee and they were a delight to listen to but this narrator just complete.y turned me off.

Then there’s the story. Maybe because I found the narration so poor I was unable to grasp what was going on but whatever it was I didn’t find it the least bit interesting. A generation spaceship heading for a new earth like planet that apparently is already inhabited. Everyone wants to earn “minutes” of hyper sleep so they’ll stay young enough to colonize this new world. This because there weren’t enough sleep chambers for everyone except the rich. But the trip is decades still to go so I don’t get the minutes angle. In any case I threw in the towel after about 5-6 hours in. Just couldn’t maintain any interest and the narration made it worse. Save your credit and find something with a known excellent narrator.

What did I get myself into?

The narrator is amazing and was the only reason I made it to the end of this book.
There was more time than not that I couldn't tell if I was on a spaceship or mid-evil England. I assume the ship was the size of a country, but I'm not sure about that either. Sometimes I felt like I was learning philosophy and others back ally New York City gang war, in the dirt, in a spaceship.
I could listen to this book again, and this is only because the narration is second only to RC Bray. I don't want to say don't buy it, but be careful and be ready to pay attention.