Coyote

A Novel of Interstellar Exploration

By: Allen Steele

Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Allen Steele

Length: 17 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

Coyote marks a dramatic new turn in the career of Allen Steele, Hugo Award-winning author of Chronospace. Epic in scope, passionate in its conviction, and set against a backdrop of plausible events, it tells the brilliant story of Earth's first interstellar colonists - and the mysterious planet that becomes their home...

The crime of the century begins without a hitch. On July 5th, 2070, as it's about to be launched, the starship Alabama is hijacked - by her captain and crew. In defiance of the repressive government of The United Republic of Earth, they replace her handpicked passengers with political dissidents and their families. These become Earth's first pioneers in the exploration of space...

Captain R. E. Lee, their leader. Colonel Gill Reese, the soldier sent to stop Lee. Les Gilles, the senior communications officer, a victim of a mistake that will threaten the entire mission. Crewman Eric Gunther, who has his own agenda for being aboard. His daughter, Wendy, a teenager who will grow up too quickly. Jorge and Rita Montero, ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. And their son Carlos, who will become a hero in spite of himself.

After almost two-and-a-half centuries in cold sleep, they will awaken above their destination: a habitable world named Coyote. A planet that will test their strength, their beliefs, and their very humanity...

In Coyote, Allen Steele delivers a grand novel of galactic adventure - a tale of life on the newest of frontiers.

BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Allen Steele

©2003 Allen Steele (P)2008 Audible, Inc.

Poorly read

The Narrator speaks in a plodding, pause between each word, way. It was so bad it was difficult to get into the story.

I stopped listening 4 chapters into the story. Why? The awful narration coupled with the start of the story being the "Conservative Fascist" took over the USA, and the Air Force captain and his crew saves the Universe by stealing the only starship after they had replaced the original passengers with the good (oppressed liberals) people.

If you believe Conservatives are Nazis going to take over the USA and don’t mind a 1st grader reading the story to you, buy this audio book.

A different narrator would have helped

My biggest complaint about this novel is the male narrator. He is very monotone and pauses between each word so that it becomes difficult to listen to. I noticed that the other books in this series are narrated by the same person so I haven't decided whether to purchase them.

I also can't understand the role of the female narrator. She basically only narrates the logs of one female character. Why not have her do all the female characters (especially since the male narrator doesn't change his tone much for female characters)?

The content of the book is pretty good. The author skips over periods of time quite a bit. I often found myself wondering what had happened to the characters during this time (such as their 1st winter on Coyote which is completely skipped).

Be sure to listen to the preview before buying. If you can handle the narrator, the book is worth getting.

It gets better

This book is a series of short stories that were peicemealed together to form a novel. Once I got past the "Stealing Alabama", which quite frankly seemed a bit drawn out and started to bore me after a bit, I started to get deeply into the novel, and I finished it in a couple of days. The colonization stories were top notch. I read some of the other reviews and I can't believe that someone would take issue with the authors political ideology, which was expoused in "Stealing Alabama". This is science fiction for crying outloud. It's not real. Enjoy the novel.

Coyote

Some people might have been easily offended by the notion of an oppressive government encouraging a minority to become colonists, but that's really quite silly. This story goes on well into the future and doesn't mention any particulars of our current circumstances. It could have gone on in any region of the world - the only reason it starts in America is because the writer is American, it isn't a commentary on any present situation. We can all relate to the concept of standing up to oppression.

Oppression and colonization is at the heart of American history. If anything, patriotic Americans should appreciate the storyline because it mirrors - and alludes to - the earliest history of the United States.
I propose any conservatives who feel offended by this book's theme - though it doesn't even appear to mention conservatism - should wonder why they assume their ideology is the oppressing one and why they assume the liberal ideology is the intellectual one.

Really, this is a realistic, hardly threatening, all-American story.

As for how the book is read, I find it well read, largely. The female narrator should have played a more prominent role from the start, but both narrators do a good job in my opinion. They are eloquent, use emphasis properly, and they use easily distinguishable tones of voice for the different characters, which greatly minimizes confusion.

And for fans of the whole "near-future science fiction, space colonization" genre, the storyline is quite enjoyable and exciting.

Book may be good - can't stand the narrator UPDATE

I like the premise of the book though it seems to be one of his early works. I haven't been able to finish it, though, because I CAN'T STAND the narrator. Sorry. * * * * UPDATE: After a 10 year hiatus, I tried it again. I found out that the narrator was ok IF listened to at 2x speed. My iPod Nano has this option. I'm currently half way through the book and it's not bad. If you are condemned to listen at normal speed, I do not recommend this reading. * *( * *

This narrator, Peter Ganim, read this book about as woodenly as the average sixth grader required to stand and read before the class. His little emotion is poorly related to the story. His sentence emphasis and cadence is very often wrong for the content. (Did he read the book before performing it?)

If someone else could narrate this book, I'd give it a second chance.

I had to stop listening

1. The politics were a little explicit, but believable. Some might be offended by American fascists using dead conservative politicians as icons of fascism, but other fascists have distorted history for their own purposes. 2. However, the author's repeated mis-stating of the time dilation due to relativistic velocity was irritating. He should have had a physicist or physics major read the story. 3. Character actions seemed designed to further the plot, because they were not believable otherwise. I can forgive an occasional lapse where the author has written himself into a corner, but there are too many here.

A modern classic of interstellar colonization

This is good old-fashioned hard SF space exploration yarn. The first interstellar colony ship, first people on a new planet, you've read this before — colonists figuring out the climate and ecology of a new world, improvising all the things they couldn't bring from home, having fatal encounters with the native fauna, etc. Coyote is not terribly original, but lots of people like very specific genres that make no attempt to deviate from the standard tropes - how many urban fantasies or Regency romances or mysteries truly stand out as different from the rest? Well, that's Coyote — you want a sci-fi novel about colonists settling another planet, you get a sci-fi novel about colonists settling another planet.

Lest I sound too lukewarm in my praise, Coyote is quite good. The first third of the book takes place before the ship — The Alabama — leaves Earth. It is a near-future dystopia in which a right-wing United Republic of America, a single-party police state ruled by the Liberty Party, has replaced the old USA and is now building a starship as a monument to itself, to guarantee its own immortality. What they don't know is that Captain Robert Lee is planning to steal it, and replace its loyal Liberty Party crew and colonists with freed "Dissident Intellectuals" — political prisoners.

The story of how he pulls this off is the first part of the book, and was originally published as a short story. The rest of the book hangs together pretty well as a single novel, but it's clearly a composite of several short stories stitched together into a linear narrative. This is a hard SF novel, so there is no FTL travel — the colonists travel 42 light years in cold sleep. The first complication is when some URA soldiers are trapped aboard when the ship launches, and go into hibernation with the colonists. Obviously this causes tension when they arrive at Coyote, knowing that they will never see Earth again and that the government they left behind is now history, centuries in the past, but they are still divided between loyalists and dissidents/"traitors."

There are other complications, of course, and enough interpersonal conflicts to keep things cooking along. The second half of the book becomes more of a YA adventure when a group of teenagers, for various reasons, take off with a couple of boats and decide to explore Coyote. It's a stupid, reckless, ill-fated adventure, exactly the sort of thing teenagers would do. But it demonstrates dramatic character growth in two of the young main characters, and leads into the novel's final act, when another starship arrives at Coyote.

Coyote is, perhaps, not an epic, but deserves to be regarded as a mid-level SF classic, or maybe a sci-fi "comfort read" if you will. Don't expect anything daring or unprecedented, but the writing is more than competent, the story has plenty of hooks and turns, and the characters make you care whether they'll survive. This is the first book in a series, and clearly there are loose threads left dangling, and I enjoyed it enough to put the next book on my list.

I wasn't too fond of the narrator, Peter Ganim, who spoke in an almost robotic monotone at times, though his voice was clear enough. The parts of the book narrated in first person by Wendy Gunther, one of the teen protagonists, had a female narrator (who doesn't seem to be credited in the book description); I was glad they used different narrators instead of having the male narrator read those parts.

Could have been much better, if only...

I actually liked the story, but...WOW, the, writer really piled on the political horse poop! It's not even so much the totally needless liberal rants, but the fact that most of it made absolutely no sense. A fascist regime that executes citizens that disagree with them, but holds the 2nd amendment sacred. Wouldn't that put guns in the hands of those they would want to execute? Oh yeah, let us not forget the abortion issue...he even found way to let us know his thoughts on that as well. It appears to make perfect sense to the writer
that a community of 100 people trying to perpetuate the human race on an alien planet would want to ABORT THEIR CHILDREN...oh well, it all ends
well...
******spoiler alert********
Fidel Castro's cyborg avatar comes to Coyote and saves the day by
enlightening the colony with the benefits Socialism/Communism....I AM NOT
JOKING!
Also...
Read in the style of 'Behind The Music', but otherwise, not bad.
In summary...
I'm sure Mr. Steele has other works that are much better, but I will never know.

Excellent premise about colonizing another planet

Excellent concept, well written. Good listen. Detailed exploration of what colonizing another planet would entail based on today's technology. Well developed characters and plot - sucks you right in.

Coyote Stinks

If you are looking for a book that you just can't stop listening to, this is not the one. The author starts with a silly premise, and compounds this error by mixing his politics with the story. Suspending disbelief, as is normal with fantasy/sci-fi, is really hard to do. Save your money and time for a different series and a different author.Whatever I paid for this book was too much.

Good potential, bizarre narration...

I wanted to like this book, I have heard good things about Allen Steele, particularly this series but I find myself seriously considering giving up on it.
Not because of the story, so far it is good, the concept, plot and writing style are fine, interesting even.

No; the problem is the narration.

To call it a monotone would be a gross understatement. It honestly sounds like a computer text-to-speech program. It is utterly without character, pacing or engagement of any kind. It feels like the narrator has absolutely no comprehension of the words he is reading.
The narrator reads the exclamations of characters in dire trouble in EXACTLY the same dead flat tone he uses to describe a tree or the colour of a wall.
It is more than off-putting it is truly awful.

I have bought many audiobooks from Audible both the US and UK sites and this is far and away the worst narration I have come across.

I would like to make clear that in general the quality of the audiobooks on Audible are very good and this is in no way representative of their usual fare.

However this is bad... I strongly advise potential listeners not to buy it.
The only reason I have given this 2 stars instead of 1 or none is that I believe a rating should be made up of a combination of the book and the narration and I believe this book has promise.

I shall fulfill that promise with a printed copy of the book, however rather than this very, very bad audiobook.

like a robot reading a phonebook - poor narration

Peter's narration was shockingly poor and made for a painfully dull listening experience for me, it was like a robot reading a phone book - didn't do the story justice at all.

Very enjoyable

I download this just a few day ago, and have not been able to put it down. While I understood it was written as separate shorter stories and then was expanded to full novel, it came across as seemless to me. I was certainly greatly taken by the second part in which ... well I better not spoil it.

In view of other reviews I must add that I have not found the reading off putting at all. While there is certainly not much drama in the reading I found it easier to follow than some other readings. I suppose it may be because as a Celt I find some american accents easier to follow than some "English" accents. So I suppose it is horses for courses. You decide, I have enjoyed it.