Gemini

By: Ray Jay Perreault

Narrated by: Ed Waldorph

Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

If you want to try a different sci-fi or you're tired of the same superheroes with the amazing weapons, then try a story about real aliens. How they live, love, and survive. They start as a naïve society that has everything, and when they ask a simple question, they are attacked and learn to defend themselves.

©2016 Raymond Perreault (P)2017 Raymond Perreault

Interesting Story

This audio has a very interesting storyline. However, sometimes I felt that it wasn’t believable. I think a different narrator would have made for a better audio.

Gemini

Any additional comments?

The discovery of a new planet or life isn't always worth taking a chance to make contact. This was an awesome listen. A very entertaining scfi audiobook.

May your soul always bear jargon.

Ray Jay Perreault is a classic style writer of science fiction, his work building on character and ideas, challenging thought. This seemingly simple story is, in fact, a challenging tale of change, coexistence and love for others. In order to establish the original way of life on Varo, a planet seemingly circling a sun alone in the distant galaxy, considerable time is spent word holding, establishing the society and politics, agriculture and daily life. The inhabitants are a peaceful people, living in harmony with each other and their sacred soil, to which they will one day return, and which provides everything they need for life. Without personal ambition to rule over others, leaders emerge naturally chosen as needed, but, although respected, they are not higher in the social system, there is no divide between rich and poor and all are fed and housed and comfortable. Life is good.
Then into this world comes a different, invading culture, threatening everything held dear. To survive they must face this new intrusion. To survive, they have to change. After the book's leisurely beginning, the pace increases as the people try to save their place on the planet.that has been their home and comfort back into the depths of time.

Ed Waldorf's narration, whilst being steady and clearly given, is not inspirational, being rather unemotional and far too slow. Increasing the speed helps a little but, combined with some repetition in the text in early stages of the book, his performance could deter some listeners from going beyond this stage into the more action filled sections which follow. Which would be a great pity. This is a book well worth reading.
My thanks to the author for freely gifting me a complementary copy of Gemini. I have read and enjoyed many of his earlier works, such as SIMPOC, and the other associated Virus stories. This one is different but still explores the nature of humanity - even amongst aliens.

Overall Solid Sci-Fi Book

As other reviewers have stated, the book does start off a little slow and the narrator takes some getting used to. However, at some point, I actually enjoyed listening to his reading. The story is actually very riveting and I felt drawn into the battles and story. This is one of those stories that one must really be patient with as the plot and narration do get better and better. Honestly, this is a pretty good book if you have the patience and it is reasonably priced.

I was given a free review copy in exchange for a review, but I hope my true thoughts come out in this review. It's not perfect but it is pretty good.

May your soil always bear Jabon

This book has an interesting premise and reminded me of some of the early 1950's sci-fi books/movies. However, this interesting idea seemed to have gotten bogged down in a lot of minutiae.

The Raog are a peaceful species and become curious about a possible twin planet. When they send up a satellite to find out if the planet exists, all of that changes.

If I had been reading a physical book instead of listening to it on Audible, I would probably have skipped a lot of it. The first part was rather boring and read more like a technical paper on how to grow the Raog's one crop, Jabon. Also, it was hard to follow the story at times because of the foreign names and the author's style of jumping from place to place a lot without any explanation.

The writing style was also more like a technical paper, without any flow or attempt to draw the reader into the story. And, why oh why, did Mr. Perreault feel that each and every time that a character left, they had to say, "May your soil always bear Jabon"!!!

The narration was OK, but very uninspiring. I don't know if this is due to the style of writing or not. Mr. Waldorph was basically just reading the book aloud without any emotion attached at all.

If you are a diehard sci-fi fan, especially of old style sci-fi, give this a try. I think that the whole story could have been a great novella, but seemed a little long in this format.

I was gifted a copy of this Audible book by the author and chose to review it.

Not your typical sci-fi - Gemini

A great storyline. I loved learning about the simple lifestyle of the Roag and seeing how they needed to grow and adapt rather quickly to protect and preserve their way of life. I appreciated the fact that not everything was sugarcoated and happy as they learned to defend themselves. Pain and loss are a part of life.

My one complaint was that the narration dragged a bit. I bumped the speed up to 1.25x and that helped.

Alien Bugs Invade!!!!

I really enjoyed this book. I have read/listened to a small selection of mr. Perreault's Earth series. so this was a refreshing look at what else he has created. alot more simple and easier to follow than the Earth series. well done would recommend giving it a listen .

I am really torn on my review of this book

I found the narration to be doll and droning and the book to be slow pace and repetitive at times. It sounds like I didn't like the book, but actually I like it very much. My best advice would be to purchase the book if you don't like it you can always return it. I think that most fans of science fiction will enjoy it a Great deal. I was gifted this book by the author, all opinions in this review our my own

Complex character development and world-building

I love it when an indie author finds a way to take a well-worn genre and breathe some life into it. Ray Jay Perreault takes a classic 1960s-70s scifi theme and brings it into the 21st century. Reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert A. Heinlein, this novel delves bravely into the cultural motivations and sociological possibilities of an entirely alien culture. Is it exciting? I can't claim that it is. But is it interesting? Certainly.

I enjoyed meeting and getting to understand the Raog people, just as much as I enjoyed learning about Valentine Michael Smith, when I met him in Stranger in a Strange Land. The bonus with Gemini was the refreshing lack of 20th century misogyny typical of those classic getting-into-the-heads-of-aliens novels, something this reader did not miss.

As for the audio portion of this presentation, I'm sorry to admit I found the narration terrible. The narrator, Ed Waldorph, simply read, both slowly and painstakingly, which drained any possible energy from the story. As well, the version I heard had some intermittent background noises that were distracting. Given the chance, I would have preferred to actually read, as the complexities of the characters and world-building were lost in an almost disinterested style of reading.

Four stars for the story, one grudging star for the narration --> three stars overall.

Good book but

I like getting the audible book sometimes and I did on this one . I did enjoy the book but could not stand listening to the narrator . He is the worst one I have ever listened to. About as boring as watching paint dry. I switched to my Echo and let her read it.