Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach

By: Kelly Robson

Narrated by: Nancy Wu

Length: 5 hrs

Publisher's summary

Discover a shifting history of adventure as humanity clashes over whether to repair their ruined planet or luxuriate in a less tainted past.

In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity's ancestral habitat. She's spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately, the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.

©2018 Kelly Robson (P)2018 Recorded Books

I liked it buuuut

I liked the story but the open ending sort of killed it for me. I would've liked it to be a bit more concrete but I do understand why it ended thos way. good read overall.

Story ends like there's gonna be a sequel.

It was a little slow to start. The "post apocalypse" world rebuilding process wasn't quite interesting. Quite a few things aren't explained well; like "fakes" and "plague babies", "fat babies"... which I kinda understood after covering ~ half of the book. And each chapter has a "opener" para, which doesn't make any sense at first.

It gets interesting only after the actual time travel mission starts. It felt somewhat similar to the Bob's story-arc in Bobiverse and I mean that in a good way. The concept of ancient people encountering modern people and thinking of them as gods always fascinates me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Both Minh and Kiki do dumb things, which don't make sense. Guess the author just needed those to make the next things happen. And the end felt anti-climactic. I wish there was a sequel to it, so that there's some sort of "conclusion", because the current one doesn't feel like it.

The narration was pretty bad in places. It sounded like a bad text-to-speech engine is narrating the book. Kiki's voice was endearing though.

Interesting premise but way underdeveloped

I was really interested to see where this story would go, but the answer was unfortunately "not very far." Despite some good setup with world building and premise, this story really doesn't stand on its own. It feels like the setup for a series, but if that's the case I'm not sure I'll have much motivation to continue because it spent too much time trying to build suspense and then ended right after the climax without answering any of the questions. C'mon, you've got to give the reader *something* if you want them to come back.

The voice actor did a very good job with the characters, and also with the transitions between different POV characters, so that part at least wasn't confusing as it sometimes can be in audio.

There wasn't even very much plot, and only two of the six main characters had developed motivations. Despite having a lot in common personality- and motivation-wise with the main POV character, I found the connection was only just engaging enough to pull me through. The other developed character was interesting, and I'd like to see where she goes next... if indeed she goes anywhere. Of the remaining four characters, one had a colorful exterior but no development of his motivations, two were really only seen through others' eyes and it wasn't really much of a wrench when they turned out to be antagonists, and the remaining character managed to almost completely escape internal development despite being one of the POV characters.

The action was supposed to be suspenseful, but somehow missed the mark. From the beginning of the book the end is set up to be a twist, and then it's presented like some sort of moral, but there just isn't enough holding it all together. It needed at least a denouement.

If there were more installments in this series, I'd recommend pulling them together into one volume, it might actually make sense that way.

Enjoyable with great narration, but...a bit short AND unfinished

I’m not especially a fan of cliffhangers; but I HATE a cliffhanger that is also essentially an unfinished ending. The story was unique enough, I enjoyed the characters, world & concepts, and the narration of Nancy Wu is superb. I will buy the next book & if the writing & narration continues to be of this caliber, I will probably buy into the series. That said, I feel cheated by this particular ending. Not sure if it’s a publisher’s move or if the author decided to do things this way, but it bugged me enough to say something. However, don’t let that decide your purchase. It’s a fresh look at time travel & an interesting melding of SF concepts. Overall, I still give 5 stars.

I love these Nebula award nominee books

it was great. almost like reading a story you've always known. something deep inside your DNA passed down through a thousand generation.

interesting concept

It's an interesting idea but the story had quite a few parts that dragged. I was hoping for more adventure and action. it seemed to primarily be packed in at the very end.

Project management scifi

I really have this my best effort but business management time travel and project management with all the racy excitement of Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations could not bring this deliverable to the customer.