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Consider Phlebas (Booktrack Edition)
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
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Publisher's Summary
Consider Phlebas: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience!
The first audiobook in Iain M. Banks's seminal science fiction series, The Culture. Consider Phlebas introduces listeners to the utopian conglomeration of human and alien races that explores the nature of war, morality, and the limitless bounds of mankind's imagination.
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender.Â
Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it. It was the fate of Horza, the Changer, and his motley crew of unpredictable mercenaries, human and machine, actually to find it, and with it their own destruction.Â
Booktrack is an immersive format that pairs traditional audiobook narration to complementary music. The tempo and rhythm of the score are in perfect harmony with the action and characters throughout the audiobook. Gently playing in the background, the music never overpowers or distracts from the narration, so listeners can enjoy every minute. When you purchase this Booktrack edition, you receive the exact narration as the traditional audiobook available, with the addition of music throughout.
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What listeners say about Consider Phlebas (Booktrack Edition)
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Eric W
- 06-17-20
Music is super distracting and constant
i wasn't sure if I'd like the music or not. Turns out I don't like it. Music is super distracting and constant.
9 people found this helpful
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- yoop123
- 03-10-20
Love this edition!!
I had already listened to the normal edition of this book but listening to it with all the sound effects was exactly what I wanted from audiobooks all along. I really hope they keep doing this style!
7 people found this helpful
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- C.
- 11-26-20
++
would be better without the booktrack. peter kenny is a phenomenal voice actor.
iain banks was a talent in storytelling that is still unmatched.
3 people found this helpful
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- John C. Ryan
- 03-04-21
amazing performance! story was good but had issues
the book track is very very good! and the performance is simply wonderful! I loved the book when it was riding high it was amazing! the best parts of the tory were absolutely gripping, however, every once in awhile it goes off on a strange tangent that doesn't add anything to the story. liked it a ton, I've heard book 2 in the series "playerof games" is better and also a good way to start.
may edit this review when I finish that
2 people found this helpful
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- jhanken
- 12-28-20
Love this book; LOVE the Book Track Edition
Iain M. Banks never disappoints. This is my second time through this book, Covid is driving me to revisit lots of favorites. But the Culture series remains my Star Wars/Star Trek/LOTR favorit-est ever literary world.
2 people found this helpful
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- Andrew
- 05-18-20
Beautiful
This version really makes you feel the fantasy, suspense and wonder that the story tells. It was wonderful.
2 people found this helpful
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- SeattleTyler
- 01-02-23
Booktrack adds immersion with headphones
This review is merely to address the added background music, playing throughout the reading. With headphones it plays wonderfully alongside the read. I recommend the headphone experience. As for those claiming it was “too loud”, or “too distracting”- I found those claims ludicrous in my experience. Great addition to audiobooks.
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- Benjamin Collins
- 11-20-22
Great setup but just shy of a classic.
loved the world building and characters. the plot has lots of great hooks and surprises but sadly fails to capitalize on them in the end. A fun read just to be in the world. fantastic performance by the reader and the music really adds to the mood
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- Anonymous User
- 06-14-22
Great start, then peters out
Terrific opening, tons of potential, just never quite developed into the story it could've been. A little heavy on invented words, but hangs together well enough. This could've been up there with the sprawling classics of sci-fi, but seems to have been aborted prematurely. Enjoyable all the same, with some interesting concepts and not too much manufactured drama, but dragged a little towards the middle/end.
Narration is extremely fast, found I was missing bits until I kicked it down to 80% speed, which seemed to be just right.
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- Anonymous User
- 05-08-22
Good story, narrator needs to slow the heck down.
See title. This narrator is WAY too fast. Had to listen at .8 speed.
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Overall
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The man known as Cheradenine Zakalwe was one of Special Circumstances' foremost agents, changing the destiny of planets to suit the Culture through intrigue, dirty tricks, and military action. The woman known as Diziet Sma had plucked him from obscurity and pushed him toward his present eminence, but despite all their dealings she did not know him as well as she thought. The drone known as Skaffen-Amtiskaw knew both of these people. It had once saved the woman's life by massacring her attackers in a particularly bloody manner. It believed the man to be a lost cause.
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Tips on how to listen to this novel - NO SPOILERS
- By Ken on 05-12-13
By: Iain M. Banks
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The Algebraist
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Geoff Annis
- Length: 24 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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For short-lived races like humans, space is dominated by the complicated, grandiose Mercatoria. To the Dwellers who may live billions of years, the galaxy consists of their gas-giant planets - the rest is debris. Fassin Taak is a Slow Seer privileged to work with the Dwellers of the gas-giant Nasqueron. His work consists of rummaging for data in their vast, disorganised memories and libraries. Unfortunately, without knowing it, he's come close to an ancient secret of unimaginable importance.
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A masterpiece.
- By M. Lambert on 08-16-18
By: Iain M. Banks
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The Hydrogen Sonata
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 17 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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The Scavenger species are circling. It is, truly, provably, the End Days for the Gzilt civilization. An ancient people, organized on military principles and yet almost perversely peaceful, the Gzilt helped set up the Culture 10,000 years earlier and were very nearly one of its founding societies, deciding not to join only at the last moment. Now they've made the collective decision to follow the well-trodden path of millions of other civilizations; they are going to Sublime, elevating themselves to a new and almost infinitely more rich and complex existence.
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More more more...
- By SRacerWV on 11-20-16
By: Iain M. Banks
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Surface Detail
- A Culture Novel
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Lededje Y'breq is one of the Intagliated, her marked body bearing witness to a family shame, her life belonging to a man whose lust for power is without limit. Prepared to risk everything for her freedom, her release, when it comes, is at a price, and to put things right, she will need the help of the Culture....
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Devestatingly superior
- By Steven on 11-21-10
By: Iain M. Banks
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Transition
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
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Finally an Iain M. Banks book on audible...
- By Kurt on 10-29-09
By: Iain M. Banks
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Matter
- Culture, Book 8
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Toby Longworth
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one man it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever.
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What happened to Peter Kenny?
- By Bill on 01-18-16
By: Iain M. Banks
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Revelation Space
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Nine hundred thousand years ago, something annihilated the Amarantin civilization just as it was on the verge of discovering space flight. Now one scientist, Dan Sylveste, will stop at nothing to solve the Amarantin riddle before ancient history repeats itself. With no other resources at his disposal, Sylveste forges a dangerous alliance with the cyborg crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. But as he closes in on the secret, a killer closes in on him because the Amarantin were destroyed for a reason.
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Defeated
- By Eoin on 07-15-12
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Rendezvous with Rama
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Robert J. Sawyer - introduction
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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At first, only a few things are known about the celestial object that astronomers dub Rama. It is huge, weighing more than ten trillion tons. And it is hurtling through the solar system at inconceivable speed. Then a space probe confirms the unthinkable: Rama is no natural object. It is, incredibly, an interstellar spacecraft. Space explorers and planet-bound scientists alike prepare for mankind's first encounter with alien intelligence.
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Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto
- By Fredrik Pettersen on 08-03-09
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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Childhood's End
- By: Arthur C. Clarke
- Narrated by: Eric Michael Summerer, Robert J. Sawyer - introduction
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The Overlords appeared suddenly over every city - intellectually, technologically, and militarily superior to humankind. Benevolent, they made few demands: unify earth, eliminate poverty, and end war. With little rebellion, humankind agreed, and a golden age began.
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Food for Thought
- By Kindle Customer on 11-17-08
By: Arthur C. Clarke
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House of Suns
- By: Alastair Reynolds
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 18 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Six million years ago, at the very dawn of the starfaring era, Abigail Gentian fractured herself into a thousand male and female clones: the shatterlings. Sent out into the galaxy, these shatterlings have stood aloof as they document the rise and fall of countless human empires. They meet every 200,000 years to exchange news and memories of their travels with their siblings.
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Science fiction in Deep time
- By A reader on 05-12-10
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A Fire Upon the Deep
- By: Vernor Vinge
- Narrated by: Peter Larkin
- Length: 21 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function.